MEANING
A disruption in the usual integration of awareness, memory, identity, or experience, sometimes felt as detachment.
Use it for
Gaps in experienced continuity; a narrator estranged from their own actions; trauma-related detachmentSeparate the character's experience from what the narration can independently establish.
Words that belong together
- dissociative episode
- dissociation after trauma
- experience dissociation
On the page
She described the dissociation as watching herself from far away.
The clinician asked whether dissociation accompanied the missing hours.
His account acknowledged dissociation without explaining every strange event through it.
Nearby words
Related words
Word forms
- Base
- dissociation
Usage notes
Primary category: horror. Clinical and psychological; not synonymous with multiple identities or dangerousness. Ordinary distraction is not enough to establish a disorder. Usually uncountable in this sense; no routine plural. Derived/related family (not inflections): dissociate (verb), dissociative (adjective).
Practice this word in a sentenceYour margin notes
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