Nolens Volens Out of Darkness1—From the Depersonal to the “Really” Personal

Abstract

The use of the self-state metaphor requires careful attention to changes in a patient's subjectivity that may go unnoticed by the patient. Affect, fund of knowledge, beliefs, worldview, idiosyncratic behaviors, physiologic state, and other aspects of subjective experience may vary from self-state to self-state. These shifts are especially visible when “not-me” self-states are present. Changes in self-state in the analyst in resonance with similar shifts in the patient provide avenues of inquiry and insight that are far reaching and make the most of the use of the analyst's self in an analysis of enactment. Not-me self-state experience is especially challenging to uncover and is often the focal point of the patient's or analyst's resistance to knowing his own mind. Intense overwhelming affects are often at the core of this resistance. Attention to these focal points may open the not-me self-state to view as a subject for analysis. Distinguishing these complex dissociative processes from psychotic process is of critical importance and requires alert consciousness for the mechanisms of dissociative experience.

Keywords:

• self
• affect
• dissociation
• psychosis
• enactment
• subjectivity
• metaphor

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Richard A. Chefetz

Richard A. Chefetz, M.D. is a Distinguished Visiting Lecturer, William Alanson White Institute; and is Faculty, Washington School of Psychiatry, the Institute of Contemporary Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, and the Washington Center for Psychoanalysis.