Abstract
To recognize dissociative process in your patients requires a shift in the clinician’s attention to take in not only the foreground specificity of what the patient says and does but to add the much more diffuse and somewhat vague background presentation of “how the patient is and how they communicate” what they are trying to convey and not convey. Objective measures and assessments are important, and it’s also true the clinician’s emotional and intellectual agility are put to work to recognize what the patient’s mind prefers not to know as it unconsciously hides from itself and the patient. Affirming the relative rarity of the classic presentation of an alter system in Dissociative Identity Disorder, this Webinar thoughtfully and playfully presents a useful perspective on recognition of what is typically hidden in plain sight during clinical assessments. Building on the basics of clinical interviewing, Dr. Chefetz will present what additional knowledge and perspective is useful in discerning dissociative experiences in your casework and how to talk about it with your patient in the spirit of respectfully opening a psychotherapy to consideration of the role of dissociative process in influencing the implicit rules in the politics of having a mind of one’s own.