Posts Tagged ‘dissociation’
Blog Talk Radio Show: Dissociation
Dr. John Deri’s next Blog Talk Radio Show: Healthy Mind and Body will be on Wednesday, April 7, 2010 from 8-9:00 PM Pacific Time.
The topic will be: Dissociation
Dissociation refers to the splitting off of painful experiences from awareness. Dissociation is the hallmark of trauma.
In this episode, Dr. John Deri will discuss dissociation as a psychic defense of last resort. He will describe the effects of dissociation on the emotional lives of affected people. Finally, Dr. Deri will share his thoughts regarding the treatment of dissociation, including conditions for healing and paths to integration.
To listen to the show you can:
1. Dial the phone in telephone number at (347) 989-0560
OR
2. Tune in to our online channel at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Healthy-Mind-Body
The Alchemy of Healing
“The psychoanalyst listens, the shaman speaks.”
Thus wrote Claude Levi-Strauss, the French anthropologist. Levi-Strauss, like Carl Jung, was intrigued by pairs of opposites.
I have been reflecting on this particular pair of opposites, listening and speaking, in the context of psychotherapy. I have come to think of listening and speaking as representing the yin and the yang of the healing process.
The Yin and the Yang of Healing
From a Taoist perspective, yin energy is associated symbolically with the feminine, yang with the masculine. These energies are not, however, linked with gender. We all embody the potential for both yin and yang poles of energy.
Yin energy in therapy is manifested through phenomena including listening, empathy and nurturance, as well as through a metaphoric “holding space” for the other.
Yang energy may be expressed through speaking, interpretation, emphatic engagement or confrontation.
Both patient and therapist must develop a full range of these capacities. The process of healing is catalyzed by a creative dance between these polar energies. Both therapist and patient need to cultivate their respective abilities to speak freely and to listen fully. Each must be able to listen to herself as well as to the other.
The Role of Early Life Trauma
The reason why listening and speaking are healing can be understood against the backdrop of early life trauma. The traumatized child goes unheard. Neither parent has the wherewithal or the willingness to listen to the child. As a consequence, the child comes to feel alone, uncared for, disconnected and afraid. Moreover, such a child is liable to grow up as an adult who is wary of closeness to others. Such an individual is prone to seek social isolation.
Wilfred Bion, a British psychoanalyst, in his paper “Attacks on Linking,” put forth the premise that such a child is deprived of a primary experience of emotional bonding or “linkage,” with either parent. This absence breeds in the child an experience of sadness, a sense of futility and ultimately of rage. The child’s rage has the potential to generalize into an unconscious hatred of all “linkages”: between the child and another human being, between thought and feeling, between the child and himself, and ultimately between the child and reality. Such broken or unconsummated linkages are the substrate for unspeakable suffering.
The Alchemy of Healing
Through reciprocal speaking and listening within the therapeutic relationship, emotionally meaningful linkages are formed. The patient’s capacity to achieve emotional connection with the self and with the other is enhanced. Dissociation between thoughts and feelings, between feelings and images, is transformed into integration.
Through integration of split off parts of the self, healing occurs. Through relatedness with self and others, the full potential of the patient blossoms and flourishes.
These transformational processes are always reciprocal, between patient and therapist. Witnessing and participating in this alchemy of healing is deeply moving. Such participation is the central calling of my life.
A Buddhist Perspective on Healing: Wisdom and Compassion
My immersion in Tibetan Buddhism has influenced my perspective on the healing process. The central tenets of Tibetan Buddhism are wisdom and compassion.
Wisdom in Healing
From a conventional point of view, phenomena are incontrovertibly how they appear. At this level, healing in psychotherapy includes the kinds of work that I have described in previous blogs and radio shows. It is essential to bring dissociated feelings and memories into conscious awareness. Doing so in the context of a caring psychotherapy relationship allows the “working through,” the integration and the release of these emotions. Mourning is central to this process: mourning for both what was wounding and for what was lacking in the patient’s early life.
Another key component of the healing process is working on the patient’s “shadow” side. Trauma propagates through identification with the aggressor. It is a painful, but vital, step to recognize one’s own propensity to hurt others.
From an ultimate point of view, all phenomena are inherently “empty.” I am not qualified to discuss the Buddha’s teachings. So, for our purposes, let me just say that healing is facilitated by the cultivation of the awareness that all of our perceptions, all of our experiences, are like a mirage, like an illusion. We all construct our own “psychic reality.”
This realization is very powerful. It gives us the freedom to construe the past from multiple vantage points. We can achieve release from an identity as a perennial victim of circumstances. We can develop the capacity for what Carolyn Myss has called “symbolic sight.” We can learn to “learn from our experience” (Wilfred Bion). We can develop the potential to do things differently, to experience transformation.
Viewing life as an open field, rather than as a constellation of solid figures, liberates us from fixity, from the unconscious compulsion to repeat the past.
Compassion In Healing
Compassion for others is the antidote for narcissism. Narcissism is the root of all suffering. When we fixate on an “I,” we experience ourselves as fundamentally disconnected, constricted, anxious and depressed. When we cultivate our compassion for others, we feel alive, related and infused with life energy.
Wisdom and compassion are inseparable, like the two wings of a bird. In conjunction with one another, they liberate us from suffering, allowing our spirits to take flight. The darkness of our delusions is dispelled. The radiance of our innate nature shines forth unimpeded. We are free.
Blog Talk Radio Show: How Does Psychotherapy Heal, Part II
Thank you to all my loyal Blog Talk Radio listeners for your ongoing support. Our show “How Does Psychotherapy Heal, Part II – Psychotherapy and Dependent Origination,” that was scheduled for January 27, 2010, will now be aired on Wednesday, February 3, 2010 at 8:00 PM PDT.
Due to technical problems on the Blog Talk Radio Show website this week, we had an unanticipated rerun of a recorded episode: How To Identify And To Deal With Emotional Trauma, in place of the live show that had been scheduled.
During my show on February 3, 2010 I will present and discuss a clinical case. I would like to express my deep gratitude to my patient for graciously permitting me to make use of our work in the context of this radio show. It is her intention to help to relieve the suffering of others through the sharing of her story.
To listen to the episode you can:
Dial the phone in telephone number at (347) 989-0560
OR
Tune in to our online channel at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Healthy-Mind-Body
Blog Talk Radio Show: How Does Psychotherapy Heal, Part II
Dr. John Deri’s next Blog Talk Radio Show: Healthy Mind and Body will be on Wednesday, January 27, 2010 from 8-8:30 PM PDT.
The topic of the episode will be: How Does Psychotherapy Heal, Part II – Psychotherapy and Dependent Origination
The Buddhist theory of dependent origination will be discussed as a perspective on transference and countertransference in psychotherapy. These psychological phenomena will be explored as a medium for the healing of early childhood trauma in psychotherapy.
During the Blog Talk Radio Show: Healthy Mind and Body, Dr. John Deri will present a clinical case as an example of the work.
To listen to the show you can:
Dial the phone in telephone number at (347) 989-0560
OR
Tune in to our online channel at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Healthy-Mind-Body
How Does Psychotherapy Heal, Part II
Psychotherapy and Dependent Origination
The Buddhist theory of dependent origination states that all phenomena are contingent on antecedent conditions. The tree is contingent on the seed, the valley on the glacier and so forth.
This perspective is an extremely valuable lens through which to view the emotions experienced in psychotherapy. A patient responds to a remark of mine with a mixture of pain and anger. She has interpreted her therapist’s comment as a callous attempt to exclude her from his inner world.
The therapist knows from previous work with this patient that she had been severely abused by her father throughout her childhood. Her mother had been completely ineffectual at protecting her daughter from her husband’s rage. Neither parent had the slightest capacity or inclination to allow their daughter into their minds. Children will always try to see the parent as “good,” even at the cost of believing themselves to be “bad”. So, this little girl gradually developed a view of herself as deficient and unworthy.
In her psychotherapy, much work has been devoted to a reconstruction of her memories of this early life trauma. The terrifying effects of the physical abuse had been greatly compounded by her rage and panic due to her “solitary confinement”. She had lived her entire childhood utterly alone, despite the physical proximity of her parents.
Freud’s conception of therapeutics had a somewhat cognitive bent. Remembering the original trauma would afford the patient insight into his own woundedness. This insight would constitute the vital element that would enable the patient to heal.
Freud’s younger contemporaries, Sandor Ferenczi and Otto Rank, held a very different viewpoint. They believed that only a repetition of the original trauma within the psychotherapy relationship would have the power to heal the patient. They felt that only through repetition would the patient’s original memories be reactivated with sufficient force and feeling to break through the barrier of dissociation.
The aliveness of the feelings associated with early life trauma, reexperienced within the transference, allows these feelings to be revised and reworked within the context of a caring therapy relationship.
This healing is never a one time process. In the case of my patient, we repeatedly respond to each other in ways that leave her feeling hurt and excluded. Each time this occurs, we struggle together to delineate her process from my process. Each time, we view and review the relationship between the present and the past. As we do so, she has come to recognize that she does have access to my mind, and to my feelings. My positive regard for her is genuine and deep.
With each repetition, she emerges stronger and healthier. The perseverative reenactment of her original wounding, through the shadow play of the transference and the countertransference, engages a gradual but inexorable healing process. The critical difference between the past and the present is the outcome of the traumatic clash. In the here and now of the psychotherapy relationship, each repetition of the crisis resolves with enhanced mutual trust and deeper closeness between us.
In her parenting and in her work, this lady has become a beacon of hope and an agent of healing for others. Within her psychotherapy relationship, two wounded healers have been brought together for the purpose of mutual healing.
I would like to express my deep gratitude to my patient for graciously permitting me to make use of our work in the context of this essay. It is her intention to help to relieve the suffering of others through the sharing of her story.