of Psychiatry at McGill niversity.

Dissociation theory and psychoanalysis have to some extent emerged as conflicting paradigms to explain mental illness, a conflict which perhaps reaches its peak over the Oedipus Complex. Psychoanalytic them) has generally been unable to accommodate itself to dissocia-tion, and psychoanalysts have instead relegated it to the status of historical curiosity or mistake, tIled to assimilate it into more con-ventional psychoanalytic them), or neglected it altogether. There is thus a paucity ofpsycl,oanalytic accounts ofmany dissociative themes, and, when present, they are generally misrepresented. Dissociative pseud{}-hallucinations and other inter-altercommunications aregen-erally misinterpreted as psychotic phenomena, flashbacks as con-version symptoms, and inscapes (internal landscapes) as the world ofintemal object,·elations. Two cases ofDID illustrate classic oedi-pal conflict played out in the inscape. The paper concludes that trau-matic etiology and oedipal conflict need not be contradictory; that multiplicity cannot be assimilated lJy current psychoanalytic theory; that current psychoanalytic them) remains pertinent to the treatment ofall patients, including dissociative ones