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Antipsychotic medications are increasingly prescribed for mental health conditions that do not involve psychosis, such as depression, dissociation, and nonpsychotic bipolar disorder. This is a really bad idea. Read more about antipsychotic medications here...


Trauma Therapy
More and more research shows significant trauma in the histories of people suffering from depression, anxiety disorders, and compulsive problems of many kinds. One implication of these findings is that trauma therapy rather than drug therapy may be the most helpful treatment. Advertisments by the drug industry that suggest that the problem is a "chemical imbalance" treatable simply by taking a pill are seriously misleading. Instead, true healing may require the neutralization of the psychological trauma that underlies the mental problem. Read more...

Subpersonalities in Control
Working with the part-selves that are the unconscious underpinnings of our conscious behavior is often quite similar to working with the alter personalities of multiple personality disorder. That shouldn't be surprising. The difference between them is only a matter a degree, and sometimes that degree of difference is entirely absent. A few weeks ago I mentioned the man who was confronted by his wife over the presence of a love note from his girlfriend which his wife found underneath her keys on the kitchen counter. The man had no memory of having placed the note there. He did not want his wife to know about his girlfriend. A part of him, however, did. Read more...

Eating Disorders and Parts Psychology
The recognized eating disorders include anorexia, bulimia, and binge eating disorder. One of the reasons for the lack of success of many eating disorders programs is that the programs spend too much time on the disorders themselves. The focus should be on a person's life history and the processing of traumatic and other painful experiences of childhood and adolescence. Unless a person is in fairly immediate physical danger from their disorder, let it alone until early experiences have been healed. Read more...

Weight Loss and Parts Psychology
Losing weight and keeping off the excess weight is one of the most difficult tasks we set out to accomplish. We have plenty of reasons for losing weight. Diabetes rates are skyrocketing. There is a strong correlation between excess weight and heart problems as well as other life shortening conditions. Perhaps even more powerful is the American (and more generally Western) concepts of thinness and beauty. For women, especially, thinness translates directly into a greater sense of beauty. Read more...

Parts Psychology
"Parts Psychology" is the label I use for psychotherapy with the part-selves that underlie all psychological functioning. The moods, attitudes, beliefs, and tendencies that characterize a person's "personality" are based in these normally unconscious parts of the mind. These parts were called "sides" by Morton Prince, founder of the Journal of Abnormal Psychology. Prince discovered these internal parts of normal people through hypnosis nearly a century ago, but his observations were soon replaced on the larger stage by the rise of Freudian psychoanalysis. Read more...

Abnormal and Normal Dissociation
I think most experts in dissociation studies would accept a definition something like this: dissociation is the abnormal separation of psychic processes or contents where these processes or contents would normally be integrated. Thus, memory should be integrated with action so that we remember putting a note on the table, deleting phone numbers from a cell phone, or ruining dinner if we did these things. Or, we should have sufficient control over our self states such that we can refrain from actions that our self states might tempt us to take if we choose to do so. Read more...

Pathological Dissociation in Normal People
The question of what is normal and abnormal is always a tricky subject in psychology. Here are some examples of abnormal dissociation. A woman who experiences herself as if she were standing outside herself. A man who experiences the world around him as if he were watching a movie. A man who is so overcome by rage that when he returns to a normal state he doesn't remember what he said or did. A woman who is caught up in the binge-purge cycle and who doesn't remember parts of her binging or her purging. Failing to remember what you said or did during an altered state of consciousness is a defining feature of Dissociative Identity Disorder. Read more...

Normal Parts
Looking back over the last few blog entries I see that I have had some unusual topic names. However, my aim with this blog is to explain and develop ideas about normal parts of self. We all have internal parts, or self states. Also called subpersonalities, ego states, and a host of other things. In trying to show how having such states is normal the greatest obstacle is convincing the reader that it is possible to have internal conversations with such states. It is fairly easy to show that we act differently in different situations, and that our access to our memories is dependent to some extent upon the situation. For example, if we are enjoying a sporting event and someone asks us a question about problems we or our children are having in school, it may be difficult to recall the details of the school problems. Read more...

Transvestite and Transgendered Parts
Parts Psychology is the study of the natural division of the mind into the structural units I call subpersonalities, but which can more easily just be called parts of the mind. These parts appear in our lives as we face novel situations, especially those that are challenging or even traumatic. It is the way our minds are genetically determined to behave. Our parts enable us to adapt to the countless variations life presents to us. Our parts of the self are there when we blend into the ordinary, and they are there when we act in ways that are not ordinary. Our parts also provide us with an understanding of the very unusual ways some of us experience life. Read more...

Demon Parts and Alters
Today's blog is about "devil," "demon," and "Satan" parts. These parts are found at all positions on the dissociative continuum. They can be found among those with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) and among very normal persons as well. I once worked with another psychotherapist who came to do some work on her marital relationship. When we did the internal work to differentiate and talk with her internal self states, she discovered that one of them presented itself as a demon. Read more...

Animal Parts, Animal Alters
Addy asks if having animal parts is normal. The easy answer is yes, as Sherri suggests, although one could argue that since most people do not have animal parts, it is not normal to have them. Both normally nondissociative people and those with a dissociative disorder, such as Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), can have animal parts, or alters. Read more...

Subpersonalities, Parts, and Alters
In talking about the internal self states that are the focus of work in Parts Psychology, I generally use the terms, "part" or "subpersonality." The terms, "alter" and "alter personality" I reserve for persons diagnosed with multiple personality disorder (dissociative identity disorder). There is a long historical tradition for using these latter terms for the internal self states that are the focus of attention in this disorder. Read more...

Psychiatrists Giving Up Psychotherapy
Psychiatrists are MDs who specialize in psychology. And while it was psychiatrists who developed talk therapy (psychotherapy) few are still practicing it. An article in the August issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry confirms a continuing trend. Most psychiatrists choose to prescribe pills rather than talk to their patients. Read more...

Treating Extreme Emotions
There are ways to relieve subpersonalities of their extreme emotions. However, these interventions do not make either the part or the person an "emotionless zombie." Releasing extreme emotions means releasing the powerful negative energies that are connected to painful experiences in a person's past. The memories of these experiences are the source of extreme reactions in the present. Something in the present triggers the extreme emotions connected to painful memories, and the result is that a person reacts much more strongly in the present than is warranted by the incident. Read more...

Connecting with Subpersonalities
When we feel strong emotions we are under the influence of the normal subpersonalities that provide us with multiple minds rather than the unitary minds we are taught to believe is the norm. Anger, fear, sadness are all normal emotions that reflect subpersonality influence when we feel these emotions. Read more...

Pornography Addiction
Addiction to pornography is a frequent issue in psychotherapy. It may surprise many to know that it has a lot in common with jealousy. The common element is a high level of energy investment. But extreme jealousy is experienced as negative energy... Read more...

Jealousy and Rage
Another emotion which, like anger, can overwhelm people to the point that they act in irrational ways is jealousy. It is frequently linked with anger so that a jealous person can be consumed with rage over real or imagined threats to a relationship. Read more...

Foundations for Rage
Rage doesn't just happen; it is created. Most often it is created during childhood experiences. Read more...

Dissociative Rage
Dissociative rage occurs when a person in the grip of rage doesn't remember what he/she does once the rage is over. In such cases what is happening is that a part of the self who is not usually in control replaces the normal self and carries out the rageful behavior. Read more...

Type II Rage
There is another kind of dissociative rage, one that does not involve amnesia for actions taken during the rage. If dissociative rage with amnesia is Type III anger and normal anger is Type I anger, then the subject here is Type II anger. This sort of dissociative rage, or Type II anger, is probably the most common experience of rage. Read More...

Read more about Dissociative Rage, Trauma Therapy for Mental Disorders, Medication and Psychotherapy on my Las Vegas psychotherapy blog.

Las Vegas Psychotherapy Blog


Jay Noricks, PhD, MFT
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Las Vegas, NV 89134
(702) 877-4944
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