Originally Posted by
esyla 
if this is like dissociating from alcoholism, couldn't that cause an issue in people with other psychiatric issues? for example, i have borderline personality disorder. one of the characteristics has to do with dissociating. i guess i'm just curious about how it would work trying to balance the addiction "stuff" with other "stuff."
In psychiatry, dissociation is defined as "disruption of the usually integrated functions of consciousness, memory, identity, or perception of the environment." When I use the word "dissociative" to describe AVRT, I am not using it in the strictly clinical sense, as a psychologist would, but in the traditional sense, as in separating, or distancing, from addictive desire.
The meanings are different depending on the context, and dissociation, as used in the clinical sense, is vastly different from the traditional sense. If the term causes you confusion, though, you don't need to think of it as such. As I used it, it does not mean what it would in the context of BPD.