Dissociation : Volume 10, No. 4, p. 192-202 : Expanding the psychoanalytic view of the intrapsychic: psychic conflict in the inscape
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Date
1997-12
Authors
O'Neil, John Allison
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Ridgeview Institute and the International Society for the Study of Dissociation
Abstract
Dissociation theory and psychoanalysis have to some extent emerged as conflicting paradigms to explain mental illness, a conflict which perhaps reaches its peak over the Oedipus Complex . Psychoanalytic theory has generally been unable to accommodate itself to dissociation, and psychoanalysts have instead relegated it to the status of historical curiosity or mistake, tried to assimilate it into more conventional psychoanalytic theory, or neglected it altogether. There is thus a paucity of psychoanalytic accounts of many dissociative themes, and, when present, they are generally misrepresented . Dissociative pseudo-hallucinations and other inter-alter communications are generally misinterpreted as psychotic phenomena, flashbacks as conversion symptoms, and inscapes (internal landscapes) as the world of internal object relations . Two cases of DID illustrate classic oedipal conflict played out in the inscape. The paper concludes that traumatic etiology and oedipal conflict need not be contradictory; that multiplicity cannot be assimilated by current psychoanalytic theory; that current psychoanalytic theory remains pertinent to the treatment of all patients, including dissociative ones.
Description
p. 192-202