Structural Dissociation of the Personality: The Key to Understanding Chronic Traumatization and its Treatment
BIO:
Onno van der Hart, PhD, is honorary professor of psychopathology of chronic traumatization at the Department of Clinical and Health Psychology, Utrecht University, the Netherlands, and a psychologist/psychotherapist at the Sinai Center for Mental Health, Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Together with Ellert R. S. Nijenhuis and Kathy Steele he wrote The haunted self: Structural dissociation and the treatment of chronic traumatization (New York/London, 2006).
TALK ABSTRACT:
Dissociation is an undue division of the personality, and is generally a highly misunderstood phenomenon, sometimes described in overly broad and confusing ways. Yet it plays a key role in the development and maintenance of a wide range of trauma-related symptoms and disorders, and thus it is crucial for clinicians to have a thorough understanding of this psychobiological phenomenon and its varied manifestations. Trauma-related dissociation involves a structural division among two or more psychobiological systems or “dissociative parts” that comprise the survivor’s personality. Each dissociative part involves relatively fixed psychobiological tendencies and its own sense of self, resulting in disruption of the normally cohesive and coherent functioning of the individual as a whole. Some dissociative parts are engaged in daily living and avoidance of traumatic memories, other parts are fixated in traumatic experiences and engaged in animal defensive actions. More severe and chronic traumatization may lead to more complex structural dissociation, and thus to more complex trauma-related disorders. Each treatment phase focuses on specific goals geared to the resolution of structural dissociation, i.e., to further personality integration and improved adaptive functioning. Treatment involves overcoming a series of trauma-related phobias. In this presentation attention is given to theory, research, and clinical practice.
