Abstract
Two early psychoanalysts, Sandor Ferenczi and Ronald Fairbairn, contributed some of the best formulations of complex trauma and dissociation that exist. No one has described more passionately than Ferenczi the traumatic induction of dissociative trance with its resulting fragmentation of the personality. No one has presented more precisely than Fairbairn a theory of the dissociative structure of the mind, emanating from attachment dilemmas. Both clinicians worked with abused children; both understood the relational nature of complex trauma; both brilliantly described cases of DID.
 
Ferenczi listened acutely to his severely traumatized patients and wrote eloquently about what he understood. His concept of Identification with the Aggressor describes how the traumatized child splits/dissociates the perpetrating aspects from the nurturing aspects of the aggressor and internalizes these in separate self-states. The traumatically overwhelmed child maintains a bond of tenderness with the aggressor but dissociates the self-states that were traumatized by the aggressor. As a result, one or more parts gravitates around the aggressor’s wishes and becomes a narcissistic extension of the aggressor, while other parts identify automatically by mimicry and by a dream-like introjection (rather than a purposeful) identification with the aggressor. Ferenczi understood and articulated the development and structure of what we now classify as dissociative identity disorder, and he formulated a relational treatment of trauma. Unfortunately, many of his ideas—adult confusions regarding the child's need for tenderness, the first formulation about the internalization of the aggressor, an understanding of child parts existing within the adult, explications of misunderstood adult manifestations of dissociation—were ahead of his time and threatening to many, Freud in particular.

Fairbairn wrote of the effects of trauma that derived from childhood neglect, abuse, overwhelming shame about unreciprocated attachment longings. He described  dissociative structure in his Endopsychic Model, which concerns internal multiplicity. Fairbairn believed that we are all schizoid (i.e., dissociative), and he provided an early, fully articulated theory of the dissociative mental structure—one that has many applications, including an explanation of splitting of the personality. Fairbairn introduced the dissociogenic power of shame. Expression of feelings to a person who is emotionally unresponsive, rejecting, critical, and/or emotionally absent can be intensely shaming. As a result, many children dissociate and/or learn to inhibit expressions of needful longings, anger, and hatred.

It is time for these clinicians to have a wider audience to rediscover their powerful descriptions and radical ideas about dissociation and their vital application to our clinical work.

Potential to Distress: No

This presentation was originally presented as part of a live virtual seminar in November, 2023.