Abstract
One of the greatest plays ever written incorporates almost all aspects of the human condition and has indeed stood the test of time. It has been translated into many languages and performed throughout the world for over 2 millennia. This play then became the flagship of the psychoanalytic enterprise and took on a new role our culture. It became inextricably linked with the theory that a boy’s unconscious incestuous wish for his mother was the central organizer of mental development. Sigmund Freud, at the turn of the 20th century, cited it as literary evidence of the universality of the “Oedipal Complex”. Since then, the enormous appeal of this theory dwarfed other crucial themes in Sophocles masterpiece, until recently. For example, pandemics, pedophilia, infanticide, human sacrifice, the power of curses, superstition, psi phenomena, religion, mass murder, suicide, trauma, inter-generational transmission of trauma, and dissociation are just some of these themes. In so doing, a number of these elements have not been as thoroughly studied by analysts as might have been.

To compound this oversight, Freud’s “cornerstone” of psychoanalysis was based on a model of motivated forgetting, or repression, which did not recognize the importance of autohypnosis and “hypnoid states”. As a result, it has taken over a century for clinicians and theorists to connect the dots from hypnoid states to dissociation. In order to do so, it has been necessary to recognize that mainstream Psychoanalysis has overvalued internal reality and minimized the importance of external reality, especially severe, early sexual trauma.

The author will review salient aspects of this history, present his own views on dissociation and dissociative disorders, and illustrate his clinical approach. It is a transference based,
dynamically oriented, and hypnosis informed, five stage treatment

Potential to Distress: Yes

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