ABSTRACT
The term "dissociation" refers to a seemingly disparate set of experiences that have come to be associated with each other conceptually (American Psychiatric Association, 1994; Phillips & Frederick, 1995; Putnam, 1989). Extensive evidence suggests that they are more frequently found among clients with a PCA history than among any other population (Briere & Runtz, 1988b; Chu & Dill, 1990; Chu, Frey, Ganzel, & Matthews, 1999; Kirby, Chu, & Dill, 1993; Zlotnick et al., 1996). These experiences include:
Absorption—dimunition of awareness of one's immediate surroundings, often colloquially referred to with terms such as "spacing out," "zoning out," or "blanking out";
Depersonalization—sensations of not feeling real, of not feeling "like myself," of being detached from and observing one's own experience, so that one experiences oneself as an object rather than subjectively;
Dissociative Amnesia—inability to recall discrete events, including very recent ones, or extensive aspects of one's personal history, in the absence of the evidence of organicity, and of sufficient proportions that it is not attributable to normal, commonplace forgetfulness;
Identity Fragmentation—a compelling sense of being divided into parts, selves or aspects of self that feel separate from each other.
