I am delighted to be welcoming Ellert Nijenhuis as guest speaker:
An individual (subject) and his or her lived world (object) constitute an inherently coupled ecological system (subject x object). This system is basically guided by various evolutionary derived longings and strivings. Integrating the involved various needs (unconscious) and desires (conscious) is a developmental, or actually, lifelong challenge. This integrative action is the more difficult, the more they are contrary.
Dissociation in the context of trauma can be seen as a relative loss of structural or systemic complexity. This loss relates to contradictory longings and strivings (particularly but not exclusively those concerning daily life, defence, and control--that is, affecting oneself and others) that the involved individual cannot integrate and resolve (entropy). At the same time, this dissociation also involves a particular structural reorganization (negentropy), more specifically, a division of a whole ecological system in two or more ‘parts.’
Dissociative ‘parts’ or rather agents are ecological subsystems of this system. That is, they are dissociated from each other in a structural (systemic) sense.
Dissociative agents are primarily guided by one or more longings. In this sense, dissociation involves a division in a teleological sense.
Dissociative agents’ longings prompt strivings, manifesting as more or less successful mental, bodily, and behavioural actions across time. Dissociative agents, then, are ecological dynamical centres of action. Part of their dynamicity is that they may affect each other.
Dissociative agents are also phenomenal ecological subsystems because they enact (bring forth, generate) their own phenomenal self, phenomenal world, and phenomenal-self-as-a-part-of-this-phenomenal-world. This latter feature is what sets dissociative agents apart from other systemic divisions (e.g., a singular first-person experiencing a motivational conflict, different physiological structures within one organism).
Dissociative phenomena (e.g., symptoms) are manifestations of the existence, enacting and re-enacting dissociative agents. Some symptoms involve an absence, thus are negative (e.g., amnesia; anaesthesia). Others concern intrusions, hence are positive (e.g., one dissociative agent hearing another dissociative agent speak, seeing another dissociative agent’s images, or experiencing another dissociative agent’s bodily or affective feelings).
While dissociative disorders involve a lack of integration, not all lack of integration is dissociative. The current trend to include ever more phenomena involving a degree of selectivity, even to the point of regarding common perception as dissociative (every perception involves selectivity), creates a huge conceptual domain. Scientific and clinical concepts, however, must select (sensitivity) but only select (specificity) phenomena of interest (sensitivity). A-specific concepts are generally unhelpful and confusing. The present proposal involves a definition of dissociation in trauma that is both sensitive and specific.
Literature
Nijenhuis, E.R.S. (2015). The trinity of trauma: Ignorance, fragility and control. Volume I&II. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
Nijenhuis, E.R.S. (2017). The trinity of trauma: Ignorance, fragility and control. Volume III. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
Organiser - Malcolm Green
