A very short
vignette
Ms.A, a female client in her late twenties has been in psychoanalysis for the past three years. One day, when a child personality shows up without her usual elegant and composed manner, her analyst, Dr.B, initially felt blindsided. Then after recovering his composure, he states
“Well, Ms.A, let’s start our session anyway. What comes to your mind this
morning?”
“Well…”
She said to herself, “I remember once that my child part suddenly went ahead of
me and spoke to him. At that time he never even noticed the change of the tone
of my voice.He is now a step ahead, it appears, but still not ready to deal with
us if it happens again in the future.”
The purpose of my presenting
this telling (so I hope ) vignette is to indicate that this is still the
standard attitude of the analysts who are not informed of the clinical
manifestation of the patients with dissociative disorder. This situation is not only
unfortunate for psychoanalysts but also unwelcoming to those potential clients for psychoanalysis who have dissociative disorders. The main thrust
of this paper is to change the analytic milieu in this regard.
