Читать книгу A Theory and Treatment of Your Personality - Garry Flint - Страница 7

The first clinical experience that caught my attention occurred when I was seeing many patients with multiple personality disorders. One of my patients allegedly had 200 dissociated or amnesic personality parts. These parts were all amnesic or unaware of one another because they could not communicate. This patient was difficult. Often, the part that came to the session did not believe there were any other parts. Sometimes she didn’t know who I was. She learned that by talking as fast as she could, she could prevent dissociation. When she dissociated, a trauma part would begin to run the body. She always dissociated during the latter half of the session. The active amnesic part was usually willing to work with me. I treated parts using Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) (Shapiro, 1991). I had to be careful using this treatment with the patient because of the possibility of emotional flooding. This patient taught me something important that changed my life.

One day, after completing a session, I turned my back on the patient to write an appointment card. I heard a loud gasp. As I turned around, I saw her pushing her chair back with her feet. The chair was bouncing across the floor. When she stopped bouncing, I saw the patient’s eyes open wide and moving back and forth rapidly. I noticed that her eyes focused just above her knees. She said in a panicked tone, “I see a white light; I see a white light.” I calmly reassured her that the experience was not unusual. I asked if I could talk to her subconscious. The subconscious said, “Yes.” She said, “No.” Most of her parts did not like me talking to her subconscious and parts. Her response almost always came out, “Yes, No.” I asked, “Subconscious, are you telling me that I should do the eye movements down near the knees?” The subconscious said, “Yes.” The visual hallucination immediately stopped. This experience prompted deliberate exploration, using the subconscious to orchestrate and refine my treatment interventions.

From this point, I increasingly began to use a semi-hypnotic technique with my patients. While the patient was awake, I used finger responses to talk to the subconscious. I communicated by asking leading questions to which the subconscious said, “Yes” or “No.” The subconscious advised me in which order to treat issues and indicated which therapeutic technique to use to treat an issue. I felt that my therapy was becoming more respectful to all parts of the patient while addressing treatment goals that were more relevant to the patient.