The general idea of dissociation concerns a division of a whole in parts. In psychology and psychiatry, dissociative parts concern bio-psycho-social structures that bring forth their own experience and idea of who they are and what their environment is like. That is, they ongoingly enact their own first-person perspective and other person perspectives grounded in this first-person perspective. Dissociative parts are thus agents that enact their own experience and conception of self and world, and couplings between this self and this world: their own phenomenal self/world. A dissociative division manifests in dissociative symptoms. Some of these can be categorized as cognitive-emotional (“psychoform”), and some as sensory and motor (“somatoform”). Some symptoms are negative (e.g., amnesia, anesthesia, paralysis), others are positive (e.g., hearing voices of other dissociative agents, sensing their bodily feelings). Somatoform dissociation is highly indicative of the existence of dissociative disorder. It is correlated with psychoform dissociative symptoms and with potentially or actually traumatizing events. Its existence is hardly recognized in DSM-5, but fully acknowledged in ICD-11. The severity of somatoform dissociative symptoms can be globally assessed with the Somatoform Dissociation Questionnaire (SDQ-20). A more precise assessment takes clinical effort. Adequate understanding and consideration of somatoform dissociation has important theoretical, clinical and scientific utility.

We are excited to invite clinicians and researchers to this free educational webinar.

September 29th 2022 (GMT+1, Brussels / Berlin / Warsaw / Madrid time), at 7.00-8.30 p.m.

REGISTRATION FORM

 The recording of this webinar will be available later as video-on-demand only for ESTD members.

BIO:

Ellert R.S. Nijenhuis, Ph.D., is a psychologist, psychotherapist, and researcher. He engaged in the diagnosis and treatment of severely traumatized patients for more than three decades and teaches and writes extensively on the themes of trauma-related dissociation and dissociative disorders. His theoretical, scientific, and clinical publications (see www.enijenhuis.nl) include the book Somatoform Dissociation (Norton, New York). With Onno van der Hart and Kathy Steele he co-authored the book The Haunted Self: Structural Dissociation and the Treatment of Chronic Traumatization (Norton, New York). This work has been translated in many languages. The first two volumes of Nijenhuis’ recent trilogy The Trinity of Trauma: Ignorance, Fragility, and Control (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen) appeared in 2015. The third volume, Enactive Trauma Therapy was released in 2017. German translations are available. Nijenhuis has been one of the founders of the ESTD. The International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation granted him several awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award. Together with his daughter Kirande, he started this year an eAcademy (www.dissociativedisorder.org).