Episode 60 - Psychological Dismemberment: Why We Can’t Stay Connected

May 23, 2019

The discussion explores psychological dismemberment as a metaphor for feelings of disconnection from self and others. It addresses how trauma affects our ability to form relationships, using fairy tales like Rapunzel to illustrate vulnerability. The power of psychotherapy is highlighted in reconnecting with severed emotions. Dreams reveal deeper anxieties and the need for transformation, moving from sterile environments to healing spaces. Ultimately, the podcast emphasizes the importance of integrating fragmented parts of our identity for personal growth.

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INSIGHT

Spectrum of Psychological Dismemberment

Psychological dismemberment ranges from everyday disconnection to severe traumatic fragmentation.
It's a protective defense mechanism against overwhelming experiences.

INSIGHT

Kalsched's Persecutor-Protector Complex

Donald Kalsched describes trauma defenses as both protective and persecutory.
Archetypal defenses can violently cut off intimacy attempts to protect the psyche.

ANECDOTE

Over-Talking as Defense

Some patients present as disconnected in therapy, talking excessively to defend against connection.
This over-talking acts as a defense to keep emotional distance from others.

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Images of physical dismemberment are often used in fairy tales, dreams and art to depict psychological fragmentation, numbing and other forms of disconnection. Such cut-offs, dissociations, and splits may be related to earlier relational trauma, and constitute defenses against experiences perceived as too overwhelming for consciousness to absorb or even acknowledge. Experience can be dissociated, or dismembered, behaviorally, emotionally, bodily, and by denying memory or knowledge of events. Jungian Analyst Donald Kalsched posits an inner dynamic that is both protective and persecutory. Such understandings can point the way to a healing process of re-membering those parts that have been cut off, thereby giving disowned feelings and experiences a fully felt place in consciousness.

The Dream

"In this dream, I remember being in a building that reminded me of a hospital or perhaps an asylum. It was very clinical looking (i.e. lots of steel and glass, white and silver walls / trim, people in smocks or scrubs). I was walking up a small stairway and looked through a doorway to see blood and body parts on the ground in front of me. Somehow I know that it was two separate bodies, but I do not know who they belonged to. When I saw the body parts, I was anxious and had to stop myself from passing out inside the dream because I had a feeling that whoever did that to the bodies could be nearby. As I gathered myself, I began to walk away from the bodies very calmly to avoid drawing attention to myself. As I walked away I saw a man, probably in his fifties or sixties, also a stranger, carrying a silver platter with more body parts. As I passed him, he said hello and smiled as if nothing were out of the ordinary. I then ran out of the building and vaguely remember running through a maze that had been set up on a basketball court until I was outside the building in a small grass field. The building was made of brick and seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. It had that look that many academic buildings have on college campuses."

References

Kalsched, Donald. The Inner World of Trauma, Routledge, 1996.

Gaiman, Neil. The Graveyard Book, Harper, 2008.

Little, Margaret. Psychotic Anxieties and Containment: An Analysis with Donald Winnicott.

Henderson, Joseph L. and Dyane N. Sherwood. Transformation of the Psyche, Routledge, 2003.

For an image of The Golden Head