title: Awareness is relative: dissociation as the organisation of meaning.
abstract: This essay discusses how the organisation of mental material within the cognitive system can influence consciousness and awareness, and presents a theory of dissociation based on the premise that awareness is relative, contingent on the activated representation of the ongoing event being linked to the activated self-representation. It allows four possible variations of integration: (i) non-integrated experience--perceptions about an object/event are either not perceived or they remain at the sensory level: traditional dissociative states, amnesia, depersonalisation etc; (ii) variably integrated experience--activation of information of a specific valence about an object blocks activation of information of contrasting valence: splitting; (iii) alternatively integrated experience--experience is integrated into a specific, limited active self-representation: fugue and multiple identity states; (iv) dis-integrated experience-the ongoing experience of innate drives and needs is no longer consistently activated in the core self-representation: repression and isolation.
authors.affiliation: Sebbelows Stiftelse Family Center, Oslo, Norway. joanl@online.no
authors.forename: Joan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Lesley
mesh_terms: D001364:Awareness; D003071:Cognition; D003243:Consciousness; D004213:Dissociative Disorders; D004532:Ego; D006801:Humans; D011582:Psychological Theory; D012094:Repression, Psychology