The Architecture of the mind: A Psychodynamic Case Study of Dissociated Selves

Abstract

The author seeks to explore the development and treatment of dissociative symptoms emerging in a 17-year-old nonbinary individual throughout two inpatient psychiatric hospitalizations. The patient endorsed the presence of multiple selves that remained connected with reality and internally with each other, emphasizing their existence in spatial allocations within the patient's mind both while dreaming and in waking life. The author highlights the therapeutic space as an opportunity to allow the interaction between dissociated selves surging from violent childhood experiences in hopes of allowing the integration of the fragmented parts of the main self. The roles of dreamwork, creative expressions, and language will be highlighted as essential components that allowed symbolization for a bicultural, bilingual individual who recently immigrated to the United States. Treatment was conducted within the limitations and particularities of inpatient psychiatric treatment, restricting treatment to a preliminary phase of exploration and containment.