“Successful” Dissociation, Pseudovitality, and Inauthentic Use of the Senses

Dissociation is posited as a form of psychical organization in which psychical conflicts and threats to self-preservation are regulated on the terrain of mind/body relations. Economic, social, and cultural processes are implicated in the establishment of stable forms of dissociation, and at the same time render these dissociative regimes opaque. This essay attempts to show 1) how the dissociative organization and process relies on a mechanism that may be described as a type of de-repression; 2) that dissociative communication is not symbolic in nature but employs a signaling function, giving rise to pseudointegration of the personality rather than true integration; 3) how a phenomenon of false encoding may be observed in these cases; and 4) how a stable regime of pathological dissociation subtly creates a sensory cocoon or invisible wall, the effect of which is to erect a narcissistic field of omnipotent constructions (a “pathological container”) in the place of actual contact between people.

Lastly, it is in the structure of pathological dissociation that it is possible to locate a specific psychological definition of inauthenticity.