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When A Major Change appears in our psychoanalytic theoretical orientation, it sometimes takes a while to seep into all the nooks and crannies of how we think about our clinical work and the developmental theory that supports it. In The Dissociative Mind, Elizabeth Howell takes psychoanalytic theory to another level by connecting her model of dissociation with such issues as attachment, defenses, the self, narcissism, projective identification, gender, and cognition. More precisely, crediting Bromberg's work, she treats dissociation as so fundamental that it underlies most psychic processes, not just personality disorders (p. 17).
In addition, in light of the turn toward relational thinking, she asserts, “The relational self and the dissociative mind are interlocking constructs” (p. 3). Howell proposes that, given the contradictions inherent in ambivalent relations between adults and children, “dissociation is one way that the psyche modifies its own structure to accommodate interaction with a frightening, but needed, and usually loved, attachment figure” (p. 3). However, she writes, “Although dissociation may originally have been a way of staying in a relationship, what is crucially at issue in dissociatively based psychopathology is the collapse of relationality—both interpersonal and intrapersonal (or interstate)” (p. 4). A defense that began as a way of staying connected with another ultimately becomes the source of internal disconnection, as the self loses contact with itself.
Scholarly, informative, and comprehensive, this is a handbook of how to think about theories of dissociation. It provides a thoroughly relational