Hi Luce,

Thanks for your very informative post! My t has never talked to me about structural dissociation before, but in discussing my problem with dissociation and my emotions, my t has mentioned some of the same things you did, including this:

human beings are born with a fragmented set of emotional states (angry, sad, content etc). In the course of typical development (with appropriate parenting) they learn to integrate these emotional states and form a single cohesive sense of self. (ie, parents teach their children how to express and process their emotions appropriately and thus return to a stable emotional baseline state, aloowing the child to 'own' all emotional aspects of the self).

When this goes wrong (parents punish emotional expression, emotions are ignored, child is abused or maltreated with no corrective experiences, child is abandoned (the list goes on)) the developing child is unable to integrate these emotional states. Unable to be processed or integrated into the child's everyday experiences, these emotional states remain separate, undeveloped and unaccepted by the child.

My t has pretty much let me know that is the cause of my issues. My t says my problem is that i was neglected emotionally by my parents and they failed to nurture me enough and provide guidance and help me aquire the skills and experiences i needed in order to grow up emotionally healthy. My SA by my neighbor is an issue for me also, and i think is tied in with my dissociation too, but it's probably a secondary issue.

Yes, i think what you say below applies to my situation:

But there is that continuum: The emotional states can fail to integrate without the need for them to assume a fully independent self-identity. This sounds to me what might have happened for you? The emotional states remain separate and unintegrated, but you don't experience the loss of time or identity states that are typical of dissociative identity disorder. According to the theory of structural dissociation severe abuse is not a prerequisite of dissociative disorders. The emotional states can remain dissociated and unintegrated as a result of something as 'simple' as a parent who punishes the expression of anger, or is emotionally absent from the child.

Thanks again for helping me understand this.