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Clin Soc Work J (2008) 36:217219
DOI 10.1007/s10615-007-0123-3
BOOK REVIEW
Elizabeth F. Howell, The Dissociative Mind
The Analytic Press, Inc., Hillsdale, NJ, 2005, Hardcover, 307 pp, $48.40, ISBN 0-88163-408-5
Kathryn Basham
Published online: 22 September 2007 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2007
Drawing upon the wisdom of our psychoanalytic ancestors, Dr. Howell, an eminent psychoanalyst and traumatologist, guides the reader through an exciting and scholarly synthesis of theoretical, clinical and research literature focused on dissociation. As she notes a sea change in psychoanalysis, she draws a metaphoric connection to Miranda the heroine in The Tempest, whose name means see.(p. 11). Notably, this authors clear, lucid vision directs us to the centrality of dissociation in understanding the internal workings of the mind. Two different models of dissociation have been offered throughout the decades. They include: (1) a continuum from adaptive normative dissociation to the extremes of pathological dissociation and (2) a taxon model that views dissociation as classied by symptoms and categorized as dissociative disorders(p. 21). Recent groundbreaking research in neurobiology alerts us to the inevitable problems involved with splitting mind-body responses following traumatic events by dividing diagnoses into dissociative disorders and somatoform disorders.
In Chapter 1 DissociationA Model of the Psyche, Dr. Howell challenges an age old Cartesian dualistic split by presenting dissociation as a salve to trauma, recognizing the value in separating oneself from an overwhelming stressful event. Although Dr. Howell, briey discusses dissociation cross-culturally by providing examples of trance phenomena and possession from different cultures, she does not fully examine the ways in which cultural norms may shape the expression of and meaning connected to responses to traumatic events (e.g., numbing and hypo-arousal). More attention to the role of culture and
PTSD might have enhanced this otherwise thorough overview of her model of the dissociative mind (Friedman et al. 2007). Reections on our own dissociogenic culture in the U.S. reveal how the media and various cultural icons have created a normative pathological dissociation by glorifying violence. In Chapter II The Self in Context: Unity and Multiplicity, Dr. Howell challenges the illusive unity of the self while demonstrating very skillfully how our notions of the self in a post-modern context involve both unity and multiplicity. Rather than aiming for a harmonious unied merger of self-states,...