ABSTRACT
The history of the concept of dissociation is littered with translations that are not always literal, but subtle semantic modifications from one author to another that shift the centre of gravity of research towards clinical cases that are different each time. The phenomenology of psychological dependence is full of cases of splits, in which a form of behaviour that is sincerely condemned in the light of day is regularly and unhesitatingly reproduced at nightfall. The construction of psychic identity and the development of social sensibility are not two distinct phenomena at all, but two poles of the same process of cultural reproduction, joined by a thick web of references. In the mature phases of psychic development, language acquisition stabilizes, at least in principle, the distinction between external reality and internal representations, opening the way to more structured forms for protecting the Ego's identity.
