The Haunted Self Quotes

“Structural dissociation occurs during confrontations with overwhelming events when mental efficiency is too low.”
― Onno van der Hart, The Haunted Self: Structural Dissociation and the Treatment of Chronic Traumatization

“As EP, survivors have been unable to create a complete personal story and are unable to share the original experience verbally and socially. They are stuck in the traumatic experience where they relive rather than retell their terror.”
― Onno van der Hart, The Haunted Self: Structural Dissociation and the Treatment of Chronic Traumatization

“The core issue in traumatization is that survivors have been unable to realize fully what has happened to them and how it affects their lives and who they are. In other words, the inability to realize involves many ways of not knowing massive psychic trauma”
― Onno van der Hart, The Haunted Self: Structural Dissociation and the Treatment of Chronic Traumatization

“traumatized individuals (as EP) “are continuing the action, or rather the attempt at action, which began when the thing happened; and they exhaust themselves in these everlasting recommencements” (p. 663).”
― Onno van der Hart, The Haunted Self: Structural Dissociation and the Treatment of Chronic Traumatization

“observations suggest that the survivor as ANP typically engages in tasks of daily life such as reproduction, attachment, caretaking, and other social action tendencies, and avoidance of traumatic memories, which support a focus on daily life issues. In contrast, the survivor as EP primarily displays evolutionary defensive and emotional reactions to the (perceived) threat on which he or she seems to be fixated. Third, survivors should be very susceptible to classical conditioning, because, as we discuss below, EP and ANP strongly respond to unconditioned and conditioned threat cues.”
― Onno van der Hart, The Haunted Self: Structural Dissociation and the Treatment of Chronic Traumatization

“We propose that BPD involves secondary structural dissociation. Consistent with this, Golynkina and Ryle (1999) found that patients with BPD encompassed a dissociative part of the personality that seems to represent an ANP (a coping ANP) and more than one EP (abuser rage, victim rage, passive victim, and zombie). Some patients with BPD have severe dissociative symptoms, and may actually border on DDNOS or DID. Our clinical observations suggest that dissociative parts in BPD patients have less emancipation and elaboration, and less distinct sense of self than in DDNOS or DID.”
― Ellert R.S. Nijenhuis, The Haunted Self: Structural Dissociation and the Treatment of Chronic Traumatization

“However, if the perpetrator is a parent who is always there, it is possible for these defensive action systems to be evoked simultaneously with normal life action systems in chronically abused children.”
― Onno van der Hart, The Haunted Self: Structural Dissociation and the Treatment of Chronic Traumatization

“consciousness (hypoarousal). When individuals are extremely hypoaroused they may not encode much of what is happening, may feel the event is not real, and may experience emotional and bodily anesthesia. To the extent that individuals nonetheless recall the events, all of these experiences make it more difficult for them to eventually fully integrate the experience.”
― Onno van der Hart, The Haunted Self: Structural Dissociation and the Treatment of Chronic Traumatization

“Neglect is a form of traumatization in which there is an absence of essential physical or emotional care, soothing, and restorative experiences from significant others. In children these experiences are developmentally requisite, and in adults they may be needed under certain circumstances, such as the aftermath of potentially traumatizing events.”
― Onno van der Hart, The Haunted Self: Structural Dissociation and the Treatment of Chronic Traumatization

“I have another self … weltering in tears … I carry it deep inside me like a wound.”
― Onno van der Hart, The Haunted Self: Structural Dissociation and the Treatment of Chronic Traumatization

“A major problem for survivors is that their sense of self is too restricted and rigid within dissociative parts, because it has been derived from a range of experiences and action systems that is too limited, and excludes too much of the survivor’s history. When survivors are unable to bind actions adequately with a sense of self in the moment, they experience symptoms of depersonalization.”
― Onno van der Hart, The Haunted Self: Structural Dissociation and the Treatment of Chronic Traumatization

“Early traumatization is a major risk factor for more severe symptoms that persist over time. Thus childhood traumatization plays a central role in the development of trauma-related disorders in children and adults.”
― Onno van der Hart, The Haunted Self: Structural Dissociation and the Treatment of Chronic Traumatization

“Their suffering essentially relates to a terrifying and painful past that haunts them.”
― Onno van der Hart, The Haunted Self: Structural Dissociation and the Treatment of Chronic Traumatization

“When such reactivation takes place, the traumatized individual often is unable to suppress the intrusion of EP with its traumatic experiences.”
― Onno van der Hart, The Haunted Self: Structural Dissociation and the Treatment of Chronic Traumatization

“First, there is the separation cry, which is a young mammal’s distressed vocalization when separated from a caretaker. This cry is actually an attempt to regain attachment upon separation, and thus we call it the attachment cry. Other defensive subsystems include hypervigilance and scanning the environment, flight, freeze with analgesia, fight, total submission with anesthesia, and recuperative states of rest, wound care, isolation from the group, and gradual return to daily activities”
― Onno van der Hart, The Haunted Self: Structural Dissociation and the Treatment of Chronic Traumatization

“Attachment is central to the context in which all other action systems mature. If attachment is disrupted early in life, it may lead to maladaptive functioning in various areas of life because the most basic action systems do not function well. Attachment relationships assist individuals in regulating their emotions and physiology, providing basic internal and relational stability.”
― Onno van der Hart, The Haunted Self: Structural Dissociation and the Treatment of Chronic Traumatization

“Without realizing it, I fought to keep my two worlds separated. Without ever knowing why, I made sure, whenever possible, that nothing passed between the compartmentalization I had created between the day child and the night child.”
― Onno van der Hart, The Haunted Self: Structural Dissociation and the Treatment of Chronic Traumatization

“Survivors become more adaptive when they can invest their energy in realizing that the traumatizing event has happened. This goal requires the realization that nothing can be done to change what happened, that the event has deeply affected their existence, and that it is not now happening.”
― Onno van der Hart, The Haunted Self: Structural Dissociation and the Treatment of Chronic Traumatization

“Most often, the "host" has some recognition of other parts of the personality, although a degree of amnesia may be involved. However, occasionally, the "host" does not know about the existence of other dissociative parts of the personality, and loses time when others dominate executive control (Putnam, Guroff, Silberman, Barban, & Post, 1986).

As C. R. Stern (1984) pointed out, it is more often the case that the "host" actively denies (active nonrealization) evidence of the existence of other dissociated parts of the personality rather than dissociative parts "hiding" themselves from the host. This nonrealization may be so severe that when presented with evidence of other dissociative parts, the host may "flee" from treatment.”
― Ellert R.S. Nijenhuis, The Haunted Self: Structural Dissociation and the Treatment of Chronic Traumatization

“The core issue in traumatization is that survivors have been unable to realize fully what has happened to them and how it affects their lives and who they are. In other words, the inability to realize involves many ways of not knowing massive psychic trauma (Laub & Auerhahn, 1993). Actually, chronically traumatized individuals often have difficulties with realization not only in regard to their traumatic experiences, but also in daily life.”
― Onno van der Hart, The Haunted Self: Structural Dissociation and the Treatment of Chronic Traumatization

“Every realization implies promises of action, either promises of accounts of past action or promises of future actions. In certain individuals, the thought of the execution of these actions provokes such anxieties that this representation become impossible. —Pierre Janet (1945, pp. 181–182)”
― Onno van der Hart, The Haunted Self: Structural Dissociation and the Treatment of Chronic Traumatization

“Who was my other self? Though we had split one personality between us, I was the majority shareholder. I went to school, made friends, gained experience, developing my part of the personality, while she remained morally and emotionally a child, functioning on instinct rather than on intelligence. —Sylvia Fraser (1987, p. 24)”
― Onno van der Hart, The Haunted Self: Structural Dissociation and the Treatment of Chronic Traumatization

“social isolation and lack of self awareness can occur partly because there are simply no words to tell the story.”
― Onno van der Hart, The Haunted Self: Structural Dissociation and the Treatment of Chronic Traumatization

“On the other hand, EPs experience these traumatic memories far too intensely, as “too real” (Heim & Buhler, 2003; Janet, 1928a, 1932a; Van der Hart & Steele, 1997). This is certainly not normal memory.”
― Onno van der Hart, The Haunted Self: Structural Dissociation and the Treatment of Chronic Traumatization

“Action systems define to a large degree what we find attractive or aversive, and then generate tendencies to approach or avoid, accordingly (Timberlake, 1994).”
― Onno van der Hart, The Haunted Self: Structural Dissociation and the Treatment of Chronic Traumatization

“The criteria of agency and ownership distinguish structural dissociation from other manifestations of insufficient integration such as intruding panic attacks in panic disorder or intrusions of negative cognitions in major depression.”
― Onno van der Hart, The Haunted Self: Structural Dissociation and the Treatment of Chronic Traumatization

“Comfort, support, and care are essential in maintaining and improving an individual’s mental efficiency (e.g., Runtz & Schallow, 1997), in part because they have important physiological calming effects (Schore, 1994; 2003b), and favorable effects on the immune system (Uchino, Cacioppi, & Kieclot-Glaser, 1996).”
― Onno van der Hart, The Haunted Self: Structural Dissociation and the Treatment of Chronic Traumatization

“adequate integrative capacity and the mental skills to fully realize their horrific experiences and memories. But they must go on with a daily life that sometimes continues to include the very people who abused and neglected them. Their most expedient option is to mentally avoid their unresolved and painful past and present, and as much as possible maintain a façade of normality. Yet their apparent normality, their life at the surface of consciousness (Appelfeld, 1994), is fragile. Dreaded memories that are awakened by strong reminders haunt survivors, especially when they have exhausted their emotional and physical resources.”
― Onno van der Hart, The Haunted Self: Structural Dissociation and the Treatment of Chronic Traumatization

“In principle, the number of parts of the personality in a given individual has little bearing on whether dissociation is at the secondary or tertiary level. A patient with secondary structural dissociation may have many EPs, while a patient with tertiary structural dissociation may only have two ANPs and two EPs. However, in general, more divisions relate to less mental efficiency and more likelihood that a traumatized individual will have tertiary structural dissociation.”
― Ellert R.S. Nijenhuis, The Haunted Self: Structural Dissociation and the Treatment of Chronic Traumatization

“In principle, the number of parts of the personality in a given individual has little bearing on whether dissociation is at the secondary [OSDD] or tertiary [DID] level. A patient with secondary structural dissociation may have many EPs, while a patient with tertiary structural dissociation may only have two ANPs and two EPs. However, in general, more divisions relate to less mental efficiency and more likelihood that a traumatized individual will have tertiary structural dissociation.”
― Ellert R.S. Nijenhuis, The Haunted Self: Structural Dissociation and the Treatment of Chronic Traumatization