ABSTRACT
Regardless of one's preferred theoretical framework for organizing one's thoughts about the nature of humans, it is readily apparent that subjective experience is a consequence of the interaction of multiple dimensions of experience. Many schools of psychotherapy tend to focus on one dimension of experience to either the total exclusion or limited consideration of other dimensions of experience. To focus on one dimension of experience implies that other dimensions of experience are not in focus (or are less in focus), thus creating a discontinuity of awareness between the two (or more) focal points. The “figure-ground” perceptual process is one way of describing the phenomenon; “selective attention” is another. Perhaps the most useful way to consider the ability to take a global experience and break it into identifiable component parts that can then be selectively altered (either amplified or diminished in their prominence) is to think in terms of “dissociation.”
