Is dissociation for real (John Simoneaux seminar notes)?

Is there a psychological process of dissociation?

Can and do people shift between functional states that are markedly different from one another with no shared memory existing between the two states?

John Simoneaux believes all mental disorder is essentially delusional.

Society demands that we have an identity and we behave consistently with that identity.  In order to fit in and stay out of trouble, we develop a persona. This is a role and it inevitably constricts the expression of our potential.

We create characters, one of which is our persona. We create characters in dreams. We fantasize being people other than ourselves. We play roles in life and in plays.

I spoke up in the seminar and presented the idea that being a unified personality is a social fiction, reading from Hermann Hesse's Steppenwolf to make the point.

In reality, however, every ego, so far from being a unity is in the highest degree a manifold world, a constellated heaven, a chaos of forms, of states and stages, of inheritances and potentialities. It appears to be a necessity as imperative as eating and breathing for everyone to be forced to regard this chaos as a unity and to speak of his ego as though it were a one-fold and clearly detached and fixed phenomenon. Even the best of us shares the delusion. (p. 31-32)

Life is a roll of the dice

For the next two days I'll be sitting in continuing education workshops at the 13th Annual Mental Health Symposium at Paragon Casino in Marksville, LA. Dr. John Simoneux of Pineville offers the Symposium and presents many of the classes. John loves being a psychologist: He is very intelligent, erudite, and passionate about his work. I've attended several of these sessions in years past. As I sit and listen to John talk about the problems of reliable and valid diagnosis, I realize how knowledgable and insightful I, too, am and how much good I've done over the course of my professional career. Yet, I'm so tired of the work (and my normal life in general), I am close to deciding to retire completely from practice. But I want to keep my license active and I will need to cram another 12 or so hours of CE into the next 2 weeks in order to do so. Sigh.

Change fatigue

Baton Rouge is hot, brutally hot. I don't mean in general, I mean now, as July sets in. Today is my birthday. I'm 63 years old and I'm tired. For quite some time I've only been able to tolerate a modest level of stress before I feel listless and apathetic. So much change is in progress. I've cut back on work yet I have trouble doing the reduced load. My mother died in January. I immediately inherited what is by my standards a huge amount of money. Tax free. This windfall puts me in a position to retire. It allowed us to start a major renovation of our house that is almost finished. It allows me to have a complete restoration of my teeth at the highest and most expensive level of quality. It allows me to buy whatever musical equipment I want, whatever collectible postage stamps I need to achieve my long-term goals. I can buy an expensive automobile of my choice, travel anywhere. I can get every health care issue addressed. I can spend my time playing the guitar, writing and recording music, writing another novel. Practically speaking I'm a free man. Even better than all of this, I have an understanding of life that frees me from worries. I know better than to be too attached to material possessions, success, popularity, my body, and my identity. Aside from some minor ailments I seem to be very healthy overall. And I'm attractive and well-liked. My wife is motivated to do what she can to please me. Nonetheless, I'm tired and emotionally flat. When I wake up, I wish I didn't have responsibilities to take care of and people to answer to. Most of the time I only care intellectually. Have I experienced too much positive accomplishment, too much desirable change? At some point will I feel joyous and enthusiastic about life? I hope so. Because it's very hot and I'm tired.

So what?...

... you might be thinking, as if anyone were reading this. I’ve been in the habit of writing about my life in a journal like this one for a very long time without ever allowing anyone else to see what I’ve written. A lot of my journal writing is posted on the Internet in this blog no one knows about. They don’t know because I seldom tell anyone and those I tell aren't motivated to look. I call it hiding in plain sight.

Identity

My name is Owen Scott, short for William Owen Nixon Scott, III. From the standpoint of human society, I’m a white Scotch-German-Anglo-Saxon Protestant male southerner and a licensed clinical psychologist. I have a birth certificate verifying my identity and age, diplomas showing I’ve graduated from several respectable universities, bank accounts, credit and ATM cards, a Social Security number and corresponding account, a US passport and so on. The same sorts of things you, the reader, have that define you as a person. Society likes to have nice, clean definitions of who people are and most people buy in uncritically. However, I think of myself not as a person but as a process. The various identity papers I mentioned are mere coordinates on the social map.

March 22, 2008

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-karel-bouley/get-over-it_b_92855.html

The following is my comment in response to the above blog post entitled “Get over it.” I found the comment on my computer this morning while I was looking for something else.

People do get over it by a process called grief.  It doesn't happen all at once and at the end of it one is not in denial but acceptance.   If someone has wronged you in the past it entails forgiveness.  If the wrong is still going on, you keep working to come to terms with it and find ways to channel your sadness and rage into a constructive course of action.  I'm visiting my 91-year old mother for Easter.  We lost my Dad on Christmas Eve of 2006 to cancer and Mom had her own bout with the disease a year prior to Dad's death.  She was brought up in the Methodist Church but for many years has found the affirming theology of Unity Church helpful.  This morning I had just finished the sentence about forgiveness when I put it down to have breakfast with Mom.  As is her protocol, she reads a passage from the Daily Word aloud before saying grace.  The word for Saturday March 22 was entitled “forgive.” 

“As I forgive I am renewed by the peaceful, life-giving energy of God.  My heartfelt desire is to always live in an environment of peace.  I know that forgiveness is vital to establishing and maintaining this peaceful, live-giving atmosphere.  So if I feel that someone has offended me or somehow disappointed me, I release the resentment I have been harboring and feel the relief that I desire.”  The reading ended with a Psalm:  “Make me to know your ways, O Lord, teach me your paths.  Lead me in your truth and teach me.”  Ps. 25:4-5.   Mom finished reading and commented, “It’s good when you can.”  Amen.