もうちょっと書いてみる
Psychoanalytic
concept of splitting as a source of misunderstanding
First I would like to focus of the notion of splitting, itself an
ambiguous term used mainly in psychoanalytic literature and clinical practice, as a source of misunderstanding about the issue of “otherness” in dissociative
pathology. Before delving into the topic, I would like to clarify what I mean
by “misunderstanding”, which is the patient’s sense if the clinicians
grasp the patient’s experience of “otherness” in a skewed way. Going back to
the above-mentioned example, if her therapist understands and tells Ms. A that Mr.B’s
reaction is not altogether that of the other person, but something that she is
repressing, or splitting off, or even “dissociating” from her mind, in many
occasion Ms.A would feel quite misunderstood by the therapist, at least based on my
clinical experience. “Why don’t you accept me as a person with my own feeling?
I’m different from Mr.B !”
This issue of “how much do we recognize parts of personality in DID as 'other' mind" is still highly controversial in the current literature on
dissociative disorder. This issue boils down to the discussion of whether
dissociative part of mind is something new and original or divided from the
main body of mind, awaiting to be integrated.
Among a few authors in the current literature, John O’Neil tackles with
this very issue when he discusses the difference between the notion of
multiplication and division of mind (O'Neil, 2009）. He argues that that division was already seen in the 19th
century.
O'Neil, John. A.（2009）dissociative multiplicity and psychoanalysis. (In) Dell, Paul F.
(ed.) Dissociation and the Dissociative
Disorders - DSM-V and beyond., Routledge (Taylor and Francis), pp.287-325
