Talking with “Me” and “Not-Me”: A Dialogue

This article explores the interface between the respective contributions of Richard A. Chefetz and Philip M. Bromberg in the area of trauma, dissociation, dissociative disorders, and clinical process. The viewpoint is offered that clinicians need an experience-near language that respects a multiple self-state model and is acceptable both to psychoanalysis and traumatology. Sharing with Sullivan the belief that we are all much more alike than we are different, Chefetz and Bromberg suggest that our theories and practices must be powerful enough to address both the conflictual pathology of everyday life and the self-pathology created by trauma and neglect. “Knowing feeling” is a prerequisite for interpreting lived experience. If affect is the centerpiece of human experience—at the core of memory and motivation—then affect-consciousness is a requirement for understanding self. Through the use of verbatim clinical material presented by Chefetz and their cross-commentary on it, the authors explore the negotiation of an affective language for understanding and talking with “me” and “not-me”—self-states separated, protectively, by dissociation—and what modifications in theory and technique may be necessary to support this process of negotiation as part of every treatment.