Thanks, thas seems helpful! But I don’t quite buy it.
Specifically, I don’t buy the developmental picture. It seems to me that, under ordinary conditions, if you ask someone to take their self as an object, they don’t immediately dissociate. Meditations which aim at defuzion don’t seem to traverse over dissociation as part of the path.
I’m also a bit fuzzy on the description of “I am” vs “I am me”. In “I am”, there’s complete equivocation. But in “I am me”, there’s mere equivalence—an explicit belief in equality. If the end goal is to recognize equality, why would defuzing the things be useful in the first place? I think the relationship is more complicated than equality.
So now I’m thinking of fusion/defusion as the dimension along which we can take (more and more) internal things as object, but dissociation/association is something like whether we take responsibility for those things. That’s not quite right, but it’s getting there.
This explains why dissociation might be ultimately dysfunctional and undesirable—it robs us of agency by not taking responsibility for things. This might be helpful in specific cases, and might be pleasant in specific cases, but as a general habit would be unhelpful and could get unpleasant.
Again, I don’t think this is quite right, and there’s also something to your “I am me” model that my “responsibility” model doesn’t capture. But I also think there’s something to the responsibility model that “I am me” doesn’t capture.
Ah, I couldn’t quite remember how I’ve seen the model described before. So rather than what I presented, I’ve seen it describes as “it → I → me” as the development of place that emotional response comes from, and this this impacts identity formation.
Thanks, thas seems helpful! But I don’t quite buy it.
Specifically, I don’t buy the developmental picture. It seems to me that, under ordinary conditions, if you ask someone to take their self as an object, they don’t immediately dissociate. Meditations which aim at defuzion don’t seem to traverse over dissociation as part of the path.
I’m also a bit fuzzy on the description of “I am” vs “I am me”. In “I am”, there’s complete equivocation. But in “I am me”, there’s mere equivalence—an explicit belief in equality. If the end goal is to recognize equality, why would defuzing the things be useful in the first place? I think the relationship is more complicated than equality.
So now I’m thinking of fusion/defusion as the dimension along which we can take (more and more) internal things as object, but dissociation/association is something like whether we take responsibility for those things. That’s not quite right, but it’s getting there.
This explains why dissociation might be ultimately dysfunctional and undesirable—it robs us of agency by not taking responsibility for things. This might be helpful in specific cases, and might be pleasant in specific cases, but as a general habit would be unhelpful and could get unpleasant.
Again, I don’t think this is quite right, and there’s also something to your “I am me” model that my “responsibility” model doesn’t capture. But I also think there’s something to the responsibility model that “I am me” doesn’t capture.
Ah, I couldn’t quite remember how I’ve seen the model described before. So rather than what I presented, I’ve seen it describes as “it → I → me” as the development of place that emotional response comes from, and this this impacts identity formation.