I’m confused about the relationship between dissociation and defusion. On the surface they sound like the same thing: getting a little distance from something; separating your sense of self from your feelings; etc. First-hand descriptions of dissociation and first-hand descriptions of some benefits of meditation have many similarities, with the exception that dissociation is described in negative terms.
Let me try to tease these apart.
Alternatively to how I presented it above, I might describe dissociation as not identifying the self perceived as object (the “me”) with the self perceived as subject (the “I”), resulting in a feeling of “I am not me”.
In this framing, fusion would be something like only perceiving the self as subject and not as object (i.e. “I just am this way”), and defusion would be noticing that there is also a self that can be perceived as object.
Defusion doesn’t necessarily imply dissociation or its opposite (I don’t think there’s a standard term so I’ll call this “unification”), but at least gets you to a place where dissociation is possible.
Overall I see this as fitting together into a bigger, developmental picture, which progresses something like this:
I am (fusion)
I am not me (defusion into dissocation)
I am me (defused dissociation transformed into defused unification)
Personally, I think I’ve experienced mild dissociative states, but I’ve never felt really negative about it; they seem interesting, and sometimes helpful for dealing with stress.
That seems right. I think lots of people experience subclinical dissociation and it doesn’t register as clearly negative, just weird, interesting, etc. Regarding stress, this matches the clinical literature, where more serious dissociation can be triggered by stressful events where it’s often viewed as a coping mechanism for dealing with more stress the the mind-body knows what to do with (typical examples include abuse victims). On a subclinical level, it’s a way to get some space from a situation a person isn’t prepared to handle at the moment.
Is meditation really defusion practice, as Kaj suggests?
I think so, but see my model above where defusion initially leads to defused dissociation but that’s not the end state, but it’s better the the fused state where one can’t even consider oneself as object.
Is defusion as beneficial as Kaj suggests?
I think so, but there’s some argument to be made that everyone would be better off in terms of life satisfaction if we just weren’t self-aware at all, e.g. we’d all be a lot happier if we were rocks, pointing in the opposite direction. Given that most people don’t want to go in that direction, defusion helps with the suffering of fusion, but that’s not the end of the story.
Is dissociation really as negative as people seem to think?
Are defusion and dissociation really the same thing? Or, what exactly are the differences and similarities?
I think I already addressed these two questions in the first part of my reply, but let me know if you still have questions.
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.
Let me try to tease these apart.
Alternatively to how I presented it above, I might describe dissociation as not identifying the self perceived as object (the “me”) with the self perceived as subject (the “I”), resulting in a feeling of “I am not me”.
In this framing, fusion would be something like only perceiving the self as subject and not as object (i.e. “I just am this way”), and defusion would be noticing that there is also a self that can be perceived as object.
Defusion doesn’t necessarily imply dissociation or its opposite (I don’t think there’s a standard term so I’ll call this “unification”), but at least gets you to a place where dissociation is possible.
Overall I see this as fitting together into a bigger, developmental picture, which progresses something like this:
I am (fusion)
I am not me (defusion into dissocation)
I am me (defused dissociation transformed into defused unification)
That seems right. I think lots of people experience subclinical dissociation and it doesn’t register as clearly negative, just weird, interesting, etc. Regarding stress, this matches the clinical literature, where more serious dissociation can be triggered by stressful events where it’s often viewed as a coping mechanism for dealing with more stress the the mind-body knows what to do with (typical examples include abuse victims). On a subclinical level, it’s a way to get some space from a situation a person isn’t prepared to handle at the moment.
I think so, but see my model above where defusion initially leads to defused dissociation but that’s not the end state, but it’s better the the fused state where one can’t even consider oneself as object.
I think so, but there’s some argument to be made that everyone would be better off in terms of life satisfaction if we just weren’t self-aware at all, e.g. we’d all be a lot happier if we were rocks, pointing in the opposite direction. Given that most people don’t want to go in that direction, defusion helps with the suffering of fusion, but that’s not the end of the story.
I think I already addressed these two questions in the first part of my reply, but let me know if you still have questions.
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.