Dr. Ettensohn reflects on the recent loss of his father.

Drawing on both clinical theory and personal experience, he explores how children internalize idealized images of caregivers as a source of safety and reassurance during times of vulnerability.

This episode examines how these idealizations can provide stability but also carry developmental costs if they are never gradually tempered by ordinary disappointments and the recognition of parental imperfection.

Dr. Ettensohn situates this dynamic within the broader context of self-psychology, showing how therapy can become a place where idealized projections are worked through and reclaimed in more realistic form.

With psychological nuance and openness, he shares how this process unfolded in his own relationship with his father, moving from idealization toward a fuller recognition of imperfection, accountability, and authentic connection.

The goal, as he frames it, is not to reject or diminish the idealized parent, but to integrate those images into a more grounded sense of self and relationship.

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Dr. Ettensohn expands on his recent episode exploring splitting as a dissociative process.

Drawing from clinical experience and developmental theory, he addresses a common question: What’s the difference between splitting, identity diffusion, and Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)?

Rather than viewing these as separate diagnostic constructs, Dr. Ettensohn presents them as points along a continuum of dissociation. They represent defensive adaptations to overwhelming early experience.

He explains why the traditional boundaries between “personality disorders” and “dissociative disorders” may be more fluid than we think.

This episode continues Dr. Ettensohn’s unique, trauma-informed reframing of narcissistic personality dynamics, offering psychological depth without jargon and compassion without minimization.

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In this episode, Dr. Ettensohn offers a groundbreaking perspective on one of the most misunderstood features of pathological narcissism: splitting.

Drawing from the work of Philip Bromberg and his own clinical practice, Dr. Ettensohn reframes splitting not as black-and-white thinking, but as a dissociative process rooted in early relational trauma.

Rather than treating splitting as a rigid symptom, this episode explores how dissociated self-states form when conflicting emotional truths, such as shame, longing, idealization, and rage, cannot safely coexist. What looks like instability or contradiction is actually a protective adaptation.

Dr. Ettensohn shows how these self-states develop as compartmentalized responses to unmanageable experience, and how they survive into adulthood, shaping identity, memory, and relationships.

Through clear explanation and compassionate framing, he illustrates how healing involves standing in the spaces between self-states, without collapsing into any one of them.

Whether you live with these experiences yourself or work with people who do, this video offers a radically humanizing and clinically grounded way to understand dissociation, narcissism, and the divided self.

References: Bromberg, P. M. (1996). Standing in the spaces: The multiplicity of self and the psychoanalytic relationship. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 32(4), 509–535.

Purchase Unmasking Narcissism: A Guide to Understanding the Narcissist in Your Life here: https://amzn.to/3nG9FgH

LISTEN ON APPLE PODCASTS: https://rb.gy/cklpum LISTEN ON GOOGLE PODCASTS: https://rb.gy/fotpca LISTEN ON AMAZON MUSIC: https://rb.gy/g4yzh8

VISIT THE WEBSITE: https://www.healnpd.org