Association and dissociation

It is useful to consider not only dissociation but also association. Dissociation can be thought of as stepping out of an image; association can be thought of as stepping into an image. The literature plays a great deal of attention to dissociation but very little to association. Dissociation is dealing with negative thoughts and emotions. Association is taking advantage of positive thoughts and emotions. Association draws heavily on the techniques of NLP. Even so, association can still involve negativity. The essential element is seeing something, whether positively or negatively, from inside the picture. Even so, this is why dissociation is required. To overcome the negative aspects, a person needs to step outside of the picture: to dissociate. The essential difference between association and dissociation is illustrated in the following figure.

As we pointed out, dissociation refers to the ability a person has to ‘detach’ himself or herself from their immediate environment, i.e., of ‘stepping outside’ of themselves and observing himself or herself and being in other places simultaneously. We all possess this faculty and it is utilized considerably in dreams. However, as with other faculties we have discussed, people have this ability to varying degrees. But once again, it is possible to cultivate the ability with a little practice.

Dissociation is as old as man. Socrates was known to dissociate on frequent occasions, and the shamans of all ages have utilized this ability. Automatic writing is also based on the ability to dissociate – but in this case, to dissociate the writing arm. Some researchers have argued that the degree of dissociation is the same as the degree of hypnosis and, accordingly, would argue that hypnosis is no more than dissociation. This is not the case, and rests on a lack of understanding, both of the phenomenon of hypnosis and that of dissociation. Many hypnotic features can be illustrated without the aid of dissociation. Furthermore, by making such a link, hypnosis becomes associated with only one of its characteristics. It is like defining a bicycle as a machine with two wheels! There is little doubt that the degree of dissociation a person can achieve is linked, in some way, to the depth of hypnosis a person can achieve: generally, the greater the ability to dissociate, the greater the depth of hypnosis. In addition, the degree of dissociation is also linked to the degree of amnesia that can be achieved. A somnambulist who is amnesic can usually dissociate to a very high degree. But once again, varying degrees of dissociation can occur without amnesia. Dissociation, therefore, is neither necessary nor sufficient for hypnosis to occur.

One other general observation is worth making about dissociation. Once dissociation has been established in a hypnotic state, the person becomes much more suggestible and instructions are much more readily absorbed by the unconscious mind, and acted upon.

The next section will deal with three different sets of instructions that can be used to achieve dissociation. In a later section, I shall take up some points raised by these instructions – including a discussion of glove anesthesia and automatic writing. In the following section, the relationship between dissociation and the ego, and why, therefore, dissociation is important in hypnotherapy, will come under discussion. My intention here is to deal, most particularly, with non-medical uses of hypnosis.

How to achieve dissociation

The aim of these suggestions is to ‘detach’ yourself from your immediate environment, to ‘step outside’ of yourself. In the first of the three instructions, I shall employ this term somewhat literally. In the second and third instructions, dissociation is brought about by means of pictorial images. In each case, it is assumed that you are already in a hypnotic state. All the images described here can be found on the scripts/dissociation web page.

The first dissociation (script #1) is stepping out of your body. This straightforward set of instructions can be very effective and is well worth practicing. The important aspect is to have your consciousness in the person outside of your body. In your normal waking state you are aware that your thoughts are in your head. This tends to localize your thoughts and contains them in the body. It is possible, however, to have them ‘outside’ of the body. When this is achieved, the person is said to have dissociated, and the person ‘left’ in the chair is more amenable to suggestion.

Script #2 is an image for disappearing! This can be a very absorbing scene and one that you may respond to in a variety of ways. There is no harm that can arise from this instruction, although, on the first occasion, the sensations that may be created can surprise you. Never be alarmed. Simply realize that no harm can come to you and just let things happen. By the time that you have vanished (!), you will be in a dissociated state. Why? Because the person becoming smaller and smaller must be some ‘other’ person from the one in the chair, and so the two must dissociate. The scene does not have to be a bed; it can be outdoors, or anywhere else you may like. The message is: be imaginative.

Script #3 deals with a change in body image. Once again, this can become very absorbing because you will experience a number of sensations. As the scene unfolds, you should allow enough time in the pauses (denoted …) to let the sensations take effect on the body. Inevitably, you will dissociate from the person in the chair. Your thoughts and your conscious awareness seem to be ‘out there’ in the wind and in the whirl­wind. If you have not dissociated before you become a whirl­wind, this will almost certainly bring it about. Once these instructions have been completed and you have gone off into space (!), after some moments of silence you can continue with suggestions, because now you will be in a much more suggestible state.

Some points about dissociation

Having tried some, or all, of these exercises on dissociation, you will have a clear appreciation of what it means. The first observation to make about your response is that your attention is moved to the scene – whether rising out of your body, becoming smaller, or becoming a whirlwind. Your attention is directed away from your physical body and there is a splitting of consciousness. This allows you to release the conscious hold on your physical body, which remains sitting in the chair. The right brain is then free to operate on your physical body, by means of the unconscious mind.

Far from being an act of introversion, dissociation allows you to have a clearer perspective about your body image because you can become critical of yourself. Psychologists have demonstrated that we do have a body image, which has been shaped by past experiences and associations with people and places. Dissociation allows you both to distort your body image temporarily, and to take on others. This, then, gives you more of an appreciation of your own body image. You cannot be aware of air, which is necessary for life. You can be aware of polluted air, or more significantly you can be aware of its absence, but you cannot be aware of its presence. The same tends to be true about body image. But, unlike air, we can become aware of it by means of dissociation.

A second observation about dissociation is its use in such things as ‘glove anesthesia’, i.e., the loss of feeling in the hand, or anesthesia in other parts of the body. What is done, in these cases, is to dissociate the appropriate part of the body. Let us take glove anesthesia as the simplest example. In this instruction, the object is to dissociate the hand. When this is done, your awareness lies ‘outside’ in the imagined hand and so leaves your physical hand insensitive to pain. You can only feel pain when you are aware of it, and since your awareness is ‘in’ the imagined hand that feels no pain, then you feel no pain. Before proceeding with the instructions, it is important first to know the location of your actual right arm, on which we shall direct attention. We shall assume, throughout, that you have both arms on the arms of the chair. The instructions are given in script #4.

This type of suggestion is usually undertaken in a hetero­hypnotic situation. If anesthesia can be accomplished, it has been used in operations, childbirth and dentistry. In the self-hypnotic context it can only be used as a means of redirecting your attention, your awareness, away from the source of the pain. If, however, you had a pain in your right hand, you would be better to direct your attention completely away from your hand and to something different. The point of including this is to demonstrate the importance of dissociation. All research demonstrates that pain remains present in the location, but if you can redirect your awareness away from the location of the pain, then the pain will not be felt. Dissociation is just one technique of redirecting your awareness.

The idea of dissociation in your arm is useful in another phenomenon, namely that of automatic writing. Although automatic writing can be done in a non-hypnotic state and without the aid of dissociation, it can be accomplished easier by means of hypnosis. The idea is basically the same as glove anesthesia, but now, having dissociated your awareness away from your physical right hand, you then make suggestions to the effect that your right hand, which is now resting on a page of paper and holding a pen, is controlled solely by the unconscious mind. Thus, you prepare yourself with a board and paper on your lap and a pen resting in your right hand. You then dissociate as in glove anesthesia, and continue the suggestions as outlined in script #5.

Wait a few moments. The writing may begin in a jerky fashion, it may or may not be intelligible; it may even be in the form of mirror writing. Most certainly, it could be joined together and use its own form of shorthand, e.g. to, too or two is likely to be written as ‘2’. Basically, the right brain does not conform to the correct usage of English. This has begun to interest those involved in linguistics, but they must realize that ‘primitive language’, or what Chomsky calls ‘deep structure’, is a feature of the right brain and not the left, in which words and ‘surface structure’ is processed. In carrying out automatic writing you need not be in a hypnotic state, but you must be capable of dissociating your writing arm. This is a clear illustration of why dissociation and hypnosis are different.

A third aspect of dissociation is its relationship to fantasy. The easier you find it to fantasize, the easier you will find it to dissociate. Children like fairy stories and fantasize quite frequently. They also frequently dissociate. They do not consider this unusual; because, to them, it seems quite natural and all children do it to varying degrees – they, at least, understand what each other mean! As we ‘put away such childish things’, so we also tend to put away fantasizing. Why this is classified as ‘childish’ and not ‘grown up’ is, in my view, a feature of our age of reason.

As reason and logic have become dominant, so we have become very left brain dominated, and so such fantasies have been demoted, simply because they do not involve reason. But the human mind is more aware of its needs than man gives it credit for, and so such tales remain. Parents rarely fail to get some personal delight when telling their children a fairy tale. This mode of expression has remained in places like India and the near East. The Tales of a Thousand and One Nights still has great charm for the young and old alike. The need for such (right brain) stimulus is well attested by Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, which required it to be classified as a ‘grown up’ fairy tale before it really became popular – and because even more popular (with both children and parents) once the film was released in 2002. Star Trek, probably the most popular TV science fiction series, was originally screened during children’s hour (at least in Britain ), but now has a wide adult following. Fairy tales, like science fiction, possess a charm that appeals, not to our reason, but to our imagination; not to the left brain, but to the right; not to the conscious mind, but to the unconscious mind.

Dissociation and the ego

It is not my intention here to become involved in a psycho­logical debate, especially on the merits of Freudian concepts of personality. These concepts have now become part of our common language. Freud saw personality as composed of three interrelated systems that he called the id, the ego and the superego. Briefly, the id is the original source of personality with which a child is born, including its instincts and drives. The id works according to the pleasure principle – it avoids pain and obtains pleasure, regardless of external considerations. The id, however, is constrained by the later developments of the ego and the superego. The ego relates the mental images with reality: it works according to the reality principle, which requires it to test reality and delay any bodily tensions until the appropriate environmental conditions are obtained.

The ego is realistic and logical, and its purpose is to create a plan, which can be executed in the environment in which it lives, in order to achieve satisfaction. Thus the id requires immediate satisfaction, while the ego intervenes and chooses the time, the place, and which conditions are to be satisfied. The ego is the ‘executor’ of the id.

The superego concerns a person’s values and morals. As the ego is the executor of the id, so the superego considers whether the plan of action, chosen by the ego, does not violate the values and morals of society, to which the individual belongs.

It is very important to realize that when hypnosis is achieved, we have a more direct link with the id. In addition, the superego is still operating at all times – both in the waking state and in the hypnotic state. Of course, because reality testing has been suspended, a person can be fooled into believing something which is harmful is not really so. In other words, if the superego is fooled, then the person may carry out something that the superego would normally have not allowed. For this to occur, the person would have to be a somnambulist so that the ego is fully repressed. Furthermore, this fooling of the ego can only take place in heterohypnosis; if you were hypnotizing yourself you would not want to fool your superego.

But what has all this to do with dissociation? By dissociating, a person can become an observer – either of himself or herself or someone else. More to the point, they can experience things that would otherwise be prevented by their ego.

To illustrate, take the case where you have to make an important decision, e.g., a change of job. You could then attempt the following experiment. After inducing hypnosis you could carry out dissociation. Once dissociated, you can begin to ask the person in the chair about their present job; how they feel about it; what they would think about having another job, and so on. The answers, so elicited, would be those that are most ‘true to your nature’. One important point must be stressed, however. It is the case that the answers are true to your nature, but because the ego has been suppressed the answers you may receive may not be feasible, given your present circumstances, i.e., they may be unrealistic! If this is the case, you will know this because you will be anxious and tense, to some extent, until your true nature has been satisfied. For instance, it is possible that the new job pays less money, but gives you greater satisfaction. Your unconscious, freed from the ego, will allow the pleasure principle to operate freely and you may, accordingly, reply that you should take the new job. If your financial circumstances cannot afford such a move, then caution is clearly called for. If you knew you would get more satisfaction from the new job, then such a use of self-hypnosis would be uncalled for. But often we do not know how much we dislike the job we are in. Suppose, therefore, that you were considering a change of job that paid roughly the same, but involved a complete change in life­style for you and your family. It is for this type of decision that self- hypnosis and dissociation can be most useful to you.

Public speaking is an excellent use of dissociation. Seeing yourself giving such a talk in your mind’s eye, means that you have already dissociated to some extent, and it can be made even more effective by first dissociating. The person ‘outside’ who is free from all anxiety and pressure, i.e., is free from the ego, can then be seen to give the talk. The suggestion that you will do precisely the same when the event arises is an important post-hypnotic suggestion to add. Since you have ‘seen’ it done and since the ‘you’ in the chair is separated from this other ‘you’, then the post-hypnotic suggestion will be more readily accepted.

The conclusion we draw from this discussion is the facility to dissociate can be used in a variety of ways, and all to your benefit.