Knowing, Not-Knowing and Sort-of-Knowing Quotes

“In my view, the spurning of DID is highly connected with knowing and not knowing about child sexual abuse. Side by side with denial of childhood trauma and of severe dissociation, is an unmistakable cognizance of dissociative processes as they are embedded in our language. We regularly say things such as, "pull yourself together", "he is coming unglued", "she was beside herself", "don't fall apart", "he's not all there", "she was shattered", and so on.”
― Elizabeth Howell, Knowing, Not-Knowing and Sort-of-Knowing

“having DID in itself creates intense shame. A person continually has to deal with not remembering what one has said or done. Thus, the person with DID must be quick with inferences and cover-ups. Unfortunately, this often convinces her, as well as others, that she is a liar.”
― Elizabeth Howell, Knowing, Not-Knowing and Sort-of-Knowing

“Dissociative Identity Disorder...is initially a useful coping response to an environment which is very difficult to endure. The problem is that dissociative responses-such as switching, blanking out, or going into a trance-become automatic, and, once the original abusive environment has been left behind, are of little use in life and may be detrimental.”
― Elizabeth Howell, Knowing, Not-Knowing and Sort-of-Knowing

“In humans, the ability to strengthen one’s readiness to face potential trauma without transforming life itself into an act of interminable vigilance, depends on a relationship with an important other who relates to your subjective states as important to him or her—and to whose mental states you can reciprocally relate.”
― Jean Petrucelli, Knowing, Not-Knowing and Sort-of-Knowing

“The rapport between art and science is something I remain of several minds about, but as it applies to psychoanalysis it has never been captured better than by the brilliant and troubled Italian poet Alda Merini (2007: 15) in the aphorism: Psychoanalysis Always looks for the egg In a basket That has been lost. For over a hundred years, psychoanalysts were trained to talk to their patients about an inferred egg, through associations and interpretations, because the basket (an entity called the unconscious) was believed “lost” (inaccessible) to here-and-now existence. At this point in the evolution of psychoanalysis it is increasingly recognized that the “egg” can manifestly be brought into palpable existence by accepting that “the unconscious” (the basket) is not a mental entity but rather a relational process that is accessible through enactment.”
― Jean Petrucelli, Knowing, Not-Knowing and Sort-of-Knowing

“The spurned diagnosis
Shame
"By shame, I have in mind the terrible, at times unfathomable, feeling of being outcast from human society, of being shunned and spurned, of being wanted by no one, and having no one who empathizes with you (Lynd 1958). Part of this experience of shame is the focus on the inadequacies of oneself in the eyes of others and oneself, and of feeling mortified, wanting to disappear, to hide inside a crack in the wall (Lewis 1971).”
― Elizabeth Howell, Knowing, Not-Knowing and Sort-of-Knowing

“Metapsychology is ontology; and the claim to knowing—to having a coherent theory of causality and treatment—undermines our appreciation of how little we understand about how people experience change, and its underlying neu-ropsychological processes. Sullivan is purported to have said, God keep me from a clever psychoanalyst! Humility truly is the beginning of wisdom.”
― Jean Petrucelli, Knowing, Not-Knowing and Sort-of-Knowing

“Axiomatic to my view of therapy is that one cannot not interact: one cannot not influence. The major instrument of mystification is language; language being not merely speech, but the sum of all its semi-otic cues: non-verbal—that is, tonal, prosodic—and nuances of irony, sarcasm, and humour. The child learns, as Laing put it, to not know what it knows it knows; that is, the child is essentially talked out of her perceptions. But language, unfortunately, is less about communication of information than about deception and control—power. This “anxiety of influence”, as every therapist is aware, may keep the patient from accepting insights from the therapist who may well be right but experienced as intrusive (Bloom 1973). So, again from the interpersonal view, resolving neurotic conflict means getting a better grasp of what’s going on around you and to you; that is, mastering the semiotic world of experience.”
― Jean Petrucelli, Knowing, Not-Knowing and Sort-of-Knowing

“The conference brochure asked: “How do we come to tolerate the ambiguity inherent in not-knowing or, more confusing still, sort-of-knowing?” I guess I would say it has to do, SORT-OF, with the wiring of the brain; SORT-OF with how much our caretakers were able to affirm the rights of all parts of us to exist; and SORT-OF being lucky to have someone to talk to at the right times—including someone who can think about you as a silkworm when you most need it.”
― jean petrucelli, Knowing, Not-Knowing and Sort-of-Knowing