ABSTRACT
During the two decades from 1978 to 1998, my writing, culminating in Standing in the Spaces (Bromberg, 1 998c), might not unreasonably be seen as my emulating Charcot by arguing that "theory is good; but it doesn't prevent things from existing." That is to say, I have been trying to convince Freud (or at least his ghost) that even after 100 years of attempting to exclude the phenomenon of dissociation from his theory of mental functioning, it remains more alive than ever. In my view, if psychoanalysis is to remain a theory relevant to understanding the mind, and a therapeutic process relevant to healing the mind, certain concepts, such as unconscious conflict, interpretation of resistance, and unconscious fantasy, need to be rethought in light of our current understanding of self-states and dissociation.
