Revealing a Broader Terrain of Dissociative Manifestations via a Developmental Perspective

This session is available for 3.00 APA and ASWB credits.

Abstract
Dissociation is widely defined as a lack of integration between aspects of experience that are normally integrated. When dissociation is conceptualized primarily or exclusively as a response to trauma, this description can be taken to mean that an initial state of integration has been disrupted by the impact of trauma, or that experiential disconnection (whether reflexive and automatic or volitional) is a form of defense. Thinking of dissociation from the perspective of psychological development introduces an appreciably different additional possibility: that the establishment and integration of various aspects of experience and functioning never fully or stably occurred. When the sustained dissociative state of consciousness exhibited by survivors of complex trauma is construed as reflecting psychological capacities that have never been fully attained due to having grown up in interpersonal environments marked by developmental deprivation, it becomes easier to recognize a range of phenomena that interfere with effective functioning, which otherwise are rarely noticed by practitioners working with complexly dissociative clients. These phenomena are not commonly thought of as dissociative because they are not subsumed under the classic dissociative “symptoms” as described, for example, in the DSM. The more extreme and severe the complex dissociative presentation, however, the more likely they are to be present, and to be identifiable through careful questioning. We will consider the types of dissociative phenomenon associated with developmental deprivation, provide an overview of types of neurobiological processes underlying these dissociative manifestations, and discuss the types of