Mapping the internal world: using the dissociative table in EMDR
You know that feeling of having a mixed opinion about the same situation? Part of you wants to be in a relationship and another wants to delete the apps from your phone. When you think about your mom, something in you feels sad, but something else is furious that you’re sad at all. Internal multiplicity is a basic feature of being human, and in complex trauma it often becomes the way a person learns to move through the world in order to survive.
In the language of structural dissociation, the apparently normal part of the personality (ANP) carries on with daily life, while emotional parts (EPs) hold unprocessed traumatic experiences (van der Hart, Nijenhuis, & Steele, 2006). The more chronic and severe the trauma has been, the more elaborate this internal system becomes. For example, the ANP might handle work emails and make small talk at school pickup, while an EP holds a frozen fear response that surfaces when a partner raises their voice. EPs often believe they are still living in “trauma time.”
If you are a therapist, you have encountered these parts with your clients even if you do not call them parts. They show up as shifts in posture, speech quality, and affective states. Fraser’s Dissociative Table Technique offers a way to invite these parts into psychotherapy (Fraser, 1991). This technique should not be misunderstood as a diagnostic tool or as having iatrogenic influence on the manufacturing of parts. It is a structured way of making visible what is already there as you prepare your client to embark on a journey through their internal world. In this piece I will describe the dissociative table technique, how it fits into trauma therapy (specifically EMDR), and provide a detailed step by step procedure (including a downloadable script for therapists).
