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In his paper, Michael Diamond wants to “reconcile dissociation, splitting, and repression within contemporary, pluralistic approaches to psychoanalysis,” thinking of dissociation in the analytic relationship with patients who suffer from severe early trauma in which dissociation “operates to attack on linkages and disrupt symbolization …” (p. 840). He would like to lessen rifts and “build bridges between unnecessarily segregated units of theoretical (and technical) understanding” (p. 845).
His interest appears timely in that it addresses dissociation, an area that I consider crucial to the development of contemporary psychoanalysis. While appreciating his contribution, at the same time I would like to express a point of view that complements his thinking and that may offer the reader the possibility of observing this area of investigation from different observational points. While Diamond privileges more developed dynamics, for my part I would shift the focus to more archaic phenomena, in line with my research on the body-mind relationship (see, e.g., Lombardi 2018b).
Diamond considers dissociation on the level of a process of working through in which the patient's capacity to think is considered substantially intact—presupposing, for example, that the patient's mind launches