what is the "true" definition of dissociation?

[qilora.livejournal.com]

and by "true" i mean (obviously) the: "modern medical definition" of the word...

every time i will sit and actually *think* on the word, and try to figure out what it is supposed to mean and how do we feel it (or not), i just end up looking at a bunch of blank faces in-house as the whole of us go "man, i have no friggin idea"....

for instance, how would doing things like "tuning out" background noise to concentrate on something you are trying to read, fit into the definition of dissociation?

thanks

- Jules.

Comments

[tigrin.livejournal.com]

"dissociate" is in the dictionary as "to separate from association or union with another", or to disunite/divide/separate.

so I guess, "tuning out" while reading a book... that would be like separating yourself from what's going on around you and associating with the environment in the material instead... dissociation seems to be anything that's removing you from complete awareness of your environment or "reality", but since reality is so subjective, it's hard to pin that as a true definition....

the dictionary does lead you in a bit of a circle, though.. it defines dissociation as the act of dissociating, and defines dissociate as undergoing dissociation. e_e

My experiences

[iamshadow.livejournal.com]

Well, to draw on the example you used, there's tuning out background noise to read, which I do often, and consider pretty normal for most people, and there's an extreme of that, where all background noise retreats to a distant hum, and my girl can be standing next to me, saying my name repeatedly, trying to get my attention, and I won't hear her until she shakes me or something. The latter is what I'd call my experience of dissocciation.

Other things that happen when I'm in this state are time passing irregularly quickly or slowly, other people's words or sounds being reduced to a strange collection of noises or a muffled murmuring.

Also, the world in general seems unreal, or less real than what's going on in my head. Someone can be speaking to me, and my own thoughts are louder than their voice, so I can miss what they're saying if I think too 'loud'. I can become very slow to comprehend the meaning in events around me and in people's words and actions. It becomes an intense conscious process to try to keep up with and focus on sensory input.

I tend to be more prone to this state if I am or have been distressed or am or have been in a depressive state. Other things I am prone to at these times include becoming hypersensitive to being in busy crowds, social gatherings and noisy places. They tire me very quickly, and I become restless, irritable and weary if over exposed.

[pengke.livejournal.com]

Here's the abstract from a presentation on dissociation:

http://www.nesttd.org/2003cal.htm

Here's the Merck Manual's definition:

http://www.merck.com/mrkshared/mmanual/section15/chapter188/188a.jsp

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

Originally, to dissociate meant to distance oneself from aspects of one's own personality that were forbidden, disapproved of, or inappropriate.

Today, dissociation broadly applied can mean any mental activity that distracts from one's immediate surroundings. Concentrating on schoolwork, reading the Times while riding the train into town, meditation, listening to music with a headset (or not).

In short, focusing or thinking about anything "too deeply" is dangerous because it can lead to having a mental disorder.

The idea that to experience shifting states of consciousness is a pathology is a peculiarly Western notion with overtones of the mysticism of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky and the "be here now" philosophy of Baba Ram Dass. It should thus be treated with the respect it deserves.

[judiff]

i've never met any mental heltlth people that would take that extreme view of it (i'm not like saying no one would). We have had some problems with getting lost inside/dissoation and the professionals that have worked with us (even ones that have been cluless and stupid about other thigs) have always definded it as getting so lost in a thing that you can't take enuff notice of whats going outside to be safe etc.. No one has ever told us being able to concentrate is a bad thing or that it's a probelm to get a bit caught up in somthing like music.
Is that a uk/us diffenrece or are you taking about a few really extreme people's ideas?

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

Some of them are pretty extreme. According to Dr. Joyana Silberg, who's supposed to be an expert on dissociation:

Dissociative symptoms and disorders are often indicators of severe traumatic stress. Practitioners often feel stymied when children and adolescents display memory problems for their own behavior, periods of episodic rage, involvement in imaginary worlds and identities, and difficulty in attachment to protective caregivers.

Having an imaginary world is a form of dissociation. Ain't it grand?

I suspect

[spookshow-girl.livejournal.com]

That you are looking at this from different perspectives.

Although it is considered a method of keeping "safe" among professionals, it is also considered bordering on disorder if it goes on for too long. Thusly it is dangerous. The psych may feel that it's good that you can keep yourself safe, but they will view it as something where you have to be careful, because if you do it too much, it has crossed over from coping mechanism to disorder. Therefore, it is dangerous from their perspective. If it wasn't considered dangerous, they wouldn't monitor that sort of behavior for changes, or excess. Dangerous by way of becoming a crutch, is still dangerous, and this behavior is considered to have decent risk of becoming a crutch, among people with backgrounds they would want to escape from.

From the patient perspective, depending on the arbitrary views of a psych, you can get tagged unnecessarily with a disorder, for spending too much time thinking.

--Me

[seraphimfell.livejournal.com]

the turkus model of dissociation is quite good, which states that dissociation is on a continuum, from "normal dissociation" (daydreaming etc), dissociative amnesia/fugue, Post traumatic stress disorder, dissociative disorder not otherwise specified, dissociative identity disorder and finally poly fragmented DID.

From my studies, tuning out the television is focus/concentration, but tuning out background noise in the body (ie. voices, pain, discomfort) fits more the idea of dissociation.

This is just my best guess, I'll ask my supervisor at work and see what he says and get back to you if it's substantially different.

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

The definition of the word has been problematic from the beginning, pretty much. Pierre Janet came up with the French word "disaggregation" to mean walling off traumatic memories. Jung (I think) translated it as 'dissociation' and used it to mean what ksol1460 said-- splitting off parts of the self. Morton Prince (who wrote about "Miss Beauchamp" in Dissocation of a Personality) popularized it in English; I believe he was the first one to apply it to multiplicity. I don't know who was the first to apply it to depersonalization and derealization experiences.

Be that as it may, the current thinking on what dissociation really is, is so nebulous it can be used to apply to anything from traumatic amnesia to just not feeling like yourself, and pathologizes a whole range of normal experiences (like daydreaming and hyperfocusing), as exemplified by books like Steinberg's Stranger in the Mirror.

The idea of dissociation as specifically meaning splitting off parts of one's self makes some sense when applied to classical Sybil-type MPD. It doesn't make much sense, though, if you're defining dissociation as distancing yourself from external reality or blocking your own feelings or memories. That would be more like having intellectual knowledge of traumatic memories but trying to deny that you have the knowledge of them, or blocking out the recollection of what it was like emotionally. Even if it's really a case of creating someone else to endure trauma, the fact is that that someone else is fully conscious and aware and can remember it later when they're at front-- by this token, total amnesia with only one person involved should be the extreme of dissociation, not substituting another person. I think they just couldn't come up with any other way to explain it.

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

And as a side-note: The definition of dissociation, like other definitions of pathology, always been rooted in prejudices about what constitutes normal and healthy. Especially these days, 'mental health' tends to be a negatively defined quantity-- that is, it's defined by what it is not rather than what it is. Plenty of 'experts' are more than willing to give you the lowdown on what a 'normal person' doesn't do, but it's more difficult for them to tell you what a normal person does do.

For instance, this quote from one of the pages linked above:
"Developmental psychologists have pointed out that young children typically experience multiple, shifting, unintegrated states of consciousness, and that integration of these discrete states into a relatively steady state of consciousness and stable sense of self is a normal developmental achievement."

Development towards a single self rather than many is being defined as the correct, normal and healthy path of progression-- indeed, that it constitutes an 'achievement', a developmental milestone like learning to talk. The reason behind why not developing a single, final self is undesirable, or constitutes a failure or developmental arrest, is never addressed-- apparently, assumed to be so self-evident that it's not even worth addressing.

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

"It doesn't make much sense, though, if you're defining dissociation as distancing yourself from external reality or blocking your own feelings or memories. That would be more like having intellectual knowledge of traumatic memories but trying to deny that you have the knowledge of them, or blocking out the recollection of what it was like emotionally."

That is what Truddi Chase did, btw, according to her own account -- she knew exactly what had happened, but in the same breath that she would explain it to her dr., she would deny that she knew. Or she couldn't think of or say words that pertained to it. This is made very clear in the opening chapters.

The hypnosis her dr. used was more to get her into a relaxed state where she could see her past events clearly, and re-experience the emotions, while in a therapeutic holding environment that would allow him to both witness with her, affirm that her mother and stepfather had done evil things, and to remind her it wasn't happening now.

We sometimes wonder if perhaps she was multiple anyway, and that her group was simply deeply affected by the abuse and the need to structure their operating system around it. We've had a few correspondents who had thoughts along the same lines. It seems that different selves take up the narrative not so much because they "hold" those memories away from others, as because they were the onse present at the time.