It's great to hear Harvey Schwartz of Polaris Insight Center share his perspective on the many dimensions of Dissociation. I agree with you Harvey!
Schwartz references the use of the dissociative medicine, Ketamine, as a useful tool in the treatment of trauma and Dissociation itself. I’ve been very curious about why this seeming paradox might be true, that a dissociative anesthetic medicine could be useful in the treatment of Dissociation.
Based on my own clinical work and personal experiences with Ketamine and KAP, I have a current working hypothesis: Ketamine creates an exogenous dissociation so that one does not have to expend essential mental energy to create an endogenous (trauma-based) dissociation. In this Ketamine dissociative state, mental energy, previously dedicated to maintaining an endogenous dissociation is temporarily freed up and available to devote to more productive therapeutic use(s) during KAP sessions.
Trauma-based Dissociation consumes vital mental energy, energy which could be used for other more useful and creative purposes. I’m thinking that for patients who struggle with problematic trauma-based dissociation, Ketamine essentially does the dissociation for them externally and by doing so it frees up the mental energy usually tied up creating the dissociation internally.
This temporarily freed-up mental energy may now be potentially used, during the KAP session, to support the client to go more deeply into discovering what may have been hidden in the dissociation and to help the patient to make contact with a deeper healing wisdom.
In the somatic psychotherapy models of Hakomi developed by Ron Kurtz and in Pat Ogden's Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, which borrows core conceptual models from Hakomi, there is a concept called “Taking Over”.
Taking Over is an intervention where the therapist may recognize that the client is exerting effort (mental and/or physical energy) of some kind in order to manage or resist something challenging.
The therapist then suggests an “experiment” and invites the client to allow the therapist to do the thing (which the client is doing)
for the client. This “Taking Over” then may free the client from having, in those moments, to devote energy to the task and in doing so they now have that mental energy freed up. At this point they now have more space to explore, become curious and to learn more about what might be beneath the pattern.
TLDR: I hypothesize that Ketamine may be “Taking Over” for our clients the need to dissociate and thereby allowing them to use their mental energy, typically dedicated to managing dissociation, for the curious, creative exploration of their internal world, their symptoms, their patterns and the material that trauma-based Dissociation might typically obscure from them.
Hakomi Institute and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute
#dissociation #ketamineassistedtherapy #ketamine #KAP #psychedelics #Hakomi #SensorimotorPsychotherapy
A note from Harvey Schwartz, PhD, on Dissociation: implications, applications, and relationship with Ketamine.
Thankful for this opportunity to speak with Julian Royce on A State of Mind Podcast!
Listen to the full conversation at https://lnkd.in/eJWYw5E7
#psychedelictherapy #ketamineassistedtherapy #dissociation #psychedelicscience
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6moThis was a fantastic discussion. I love Hannah’s ‘cautious optimism’ and her comments on the juxtaposition of the multiple realities that we are living - things are really bad, things are better than they’ve been & things could be even better - was so thought provoking. 💚