From Janet to Bromberg, via Ferenczi. Standing in the spaces of the literature on dissociation

Philip Bromberg proposes a clinical theory based on a relational model that posits dissociation at its centre. Like Pierre Janet, Bromberg believes that early relational trauma severely damages the integrative functions of the mind. In accordance with studies on traumatic memories, Bromberg postulates that early relational trauma might create retroactive amnesia, in which somatic memories devoid of symbolic form are not representable in conscious-explicit form. Janet and Sandor Ferenczi have allowed contemporary psychoanalysis to reincorporate the dissociative elements in the functioning of any psychic structure and to stress the importance of working with these parts in therapy in a reciprocal process of regulation, as highlighted by Bromberg and further explicated by recent neuroscientific developments. Historically, the path of splitting, or rather dissociation or fragmentation, would have been the pathological reaction described by Janet as a response to the traumatic shock or by Ferenczi when he talks about fragmentation of the personality.