Expanding dissociation informed psychoanalytic practice: How to make conceptual sense of Not-Me, No-Me, and Many-Mes

Abstract

ABSTRACT In recent years, psychoanalysis has undergone a very welcomed transformation away from a predominant emphasis on repressive symptomatology and intrapsychic conflict, toward an appreciation of dissociative symptomatology and the unformulated. And yet, much ambiguity surrounds our understanding of dissociation as a process, defense, and structure of the self. In this paper, I outline a self-state continuum model to help formulate the different ways defensive dissociation may be operating from a discrete process into becoming a structure of the self. I elaborate on this continuum model and go on to examine how discontinuous self-system patients may be better identified and treated from within a psychoanalytic perspective.