During the recent holiday season, on my daily commute to the office, I walked by a poster of New York City Ballet’s Nutcracker, smiling at the familiar image of rosey-cheeked wooden soldiers and the memories that it elicited of my childhood. Until one morning as I walked by, it elicited something else, the image of […]
Tag: Trauma
ON MEMORY AND THE RE-LIVING OF IT.
Memory is one of those concepts that has been studied for centuries and has spawned multiple theories about what it is and how it operates. In psychology we think about memory functionally: in terms of how it operates and what it does. Hence, there are various types of memory whose name describe its function. […]
Don’t Want to Feel-Don’t Want To Know : On Boredom and Confusion.
I have been thinking about boredom and confusion, as two states which herald dissociation. Both occur often enough in my consulting room; and we all seem to experience them at one time or another. They seem to block certain thoughts and sensations, memories, and feelings under a fog of non-experience. We are then left […]
DISSOCIATION – Part One and Three Quarters.
Several weeks ago, I wrote two blogs on dissociation: On Being (One)self and Dissociation and Trauma. Both pieces described the process of dissociation on a spectrum of severity. Today’s blog, part one and three quarters, is meant to address a crucial difference in how dissociation is enlisted by our psyche, either as protective or […]
NINE YEARS AND COUNTING: Life after September 11.
That is how much time has passed. Nine years. To the day. Almost to the hour as I write this. You know what I am talking about. None of us can forget. Time has gone by, it has in fact, altered everything, and also left scars and open wounds. The smoke has cleared, the debris […]
TRAUMA AND DISSOCIATION.
Last week I wrote about the fact that our experience is discontinuous in nature. I also said that despite the fact that we experience ourselves as one, unitary being, we actually have many self-states or self configurations which help us along, are not always in our awareness, and are often dissociated. Then, a patient who read […]