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The authoritative DSM-4 identifies discrete non-biogenic mental-health "disorders" spanning anxiety, cognition (thinking), psychoses, substance-related conditions (ad-dictions), mood, dissociation, sexual, gender-identity, eating, sleeping, adjustment-reaction, psychosomatic, impulse-control, and personality disorders. Among these, a significant number of my hundreds of divorcing and stepfamily clients have described themselves and/or a family member as having bi-polar, Seasonal Affective, manic-depressive, clinical- depression, hyperactivity, attention-deficit, Narcissistic, borderline, and "addictive-personality" disorders. Many were relying on medications to adapt to these. The high majority of my clients with and without such conditions describe low-nurturance childhoods (in my opinion). I've studied and practiced inner-family therapy with hundreds of clients since 1990. My growing belief is that every variation of each of these non-biogenic DSM dis-orders is a symptom of: (1) a significant dominance of a "false self" and five related wounds; (2) surviving and perhaps currently living and working in low-nurturance ("tox-ic") relationships and environments which promote these wounds; (3) personal and social ignorance on these; and (4) chronic unawareness and protective false-self perception distortions. If this is true, most professionals working with "troubled" indi-viduals, couples, and families risk focusing on symptom reduction. To judge whether this premise has merit, professionals need to (a) assess themselves honestly for inner wounds, (b) want to learn about inner-family assess-ment and treatment and (c) try it with a range of clients with an open mind. I suspect that so far, few human-service teachers, providers, evaluators, funders, and legislators know anything about this, though clinical "personality splitting" (dissociation) theory is over 100 years old. In this nonprofit, ad-free site , Lesson 1 provides a conceptual framework for effective false-self assessment and wound- recovery. |
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