Dissociation And Its Disorders

Abstract

Dissociation is a ubiquitous psychic process, differentiated from the psychopathology of dissociative disorders. Dissociation may be defensive, adaptive, or protective, and may serve multiple functions. Clinically, dissociation generally involves denial, isolation, and various forms of splitting of the self and the go. Altered states of consciousness are characteristic of dissociation. Dissociative disorder may be transient or enduring, entailing division of the personality without fill conscious awareness of the divided self. Dissociative disorders are typically a consequence of severe, protracted trauma, or a serious disturbance of the infantile primary object relationship. These disorders are closely associated with borderline personality, propensity for regression, and significant disturbance of identity and reality. Clinical illustrations of dissociate disorder here include an adult bipolar patient with a severely traumatic childhood, and an adult male who experienced traumatic childhood mother-son incest in a highly dysfunctional family. While dissociative disorders are maladaptive, dissociation may paradoxically facilitate novel self-object configurations, imagination, and creativity.