Dissociachotic: Seeing the Nonpsychosis We Share

Abstract

The potential for growth within a relationship between individuals experiencing “psychotic” and “nonpsychotic” realities is based in acceptance of a shared human vulnerability. Through the human-to-human relationship, acceptance of the mutual experience of ontological insecurity and fear of nihilation can facilitate the emergence of a “nonpsychotic” reality. Interconnectedness, that occurs through the process of growth within a loving, nongoal–orientated relationship, leads to a negation of the need for an altered state to exist to defend the threat of nihilation in the person experiencing “psychosis,” and the person in a “nonpsychotic” state to resist the attempt to change the legitimate reality the other person is experiencing. The ensuing changes to the liminal space occupied by a person said to be in a “psychotic” state, when being together in a coexisting same experience, can lead to mutual growth and the evaporation of the so labelled “psychotic” state. This demonstrates the “psychotic” experience is more consistent with a dissociative response to threat in relationship and could be reframed as a “Dissociachotic”—a form of dissociation that has been mislabelled as a unique condition of “psychosis” due to its specific representation of creating safety for a person experiencing threat in relationship.