When you wake up early in the morning, you sometimes forget whether you"re awake or not. Things seem distant and unreal for a period of time. Can you imagine what it would be like living in that feeling of being in a dream-like-state all the time It would be horrifying. And that is just what I am going to describe in this paper.
That feeling of being in a dream, or things around you seeming distant or unreal is referred as dissociative or disassociation by the American Psychiatry Association . Disassociation means, "to detach from association"(Merriam-Webster. Collegiate Dictionary. 24 Oct. 2001.) D.D., Depersonalization/Derealization Disorder, is a very rare condition where you feel detached from oneself during most of the time and that things around you are unreal. .
This disorder is categorized with the famous Dissociative Identity Disorder or as it is more commonly referred to as Multiple Personality Disorder. Both are dissociative disorders where a person detaches him/herself from familiar things, such as; reality, personality, and other things directly effecting the human mind. .
(American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), May 1994. Schwartz RH.).
In this paper, I will try to give you some background information on this psychological disorder, what causes it, and what can be done about it.
Historical Reference to D.D.
The Greek philosophers believed that a "detached intellect" was an ideal state. And that to be a philosopher you had to be "detached" from one's own self. The Hebrew people, however, thought that being detached from one's own self was a lesser state of mind. This is described in the book, The Irrational Man. .
"Hebraism contains no eternal realm of essence, which Greek philosophy was to fabricate through Plato, as affording the intellectual deliverance from the evil of time. Such a realm of eternal essences is possible only for a detached intellect, one who, in Plato's phrase, becomes a 'spectator of all time and all existence.
