This work proposes that much of human life is lived as “unformulated experience”—felt but not yet symbolized—and that dissociation, more than repression, organizes these unarticulated states. Within a relational-constructivist perspective, meaning emerges in dialogue, as clinician and patient co-create language and images that give shape to previously unspeakable experience. The clinical task is to cultivate curiosity, play, and imagination so that split-off self-states can be recognized and integrated, opening new possibilities for living. Through theory and case material, it shows how uncertainty, mutual influence, and emergent meaning drive therapeutic change.

A collection of clinical journeys illustrating how dissociation and multiple self-states shape psychic life and the therapeutic relationship. Through vivid case narratives, it shows how the capacity to dream experience—while awake and within the analytic dyad—emerges in a relational field, transforming enactments and trauma into meaning. Emphasizing intersubjectivity and the therapist’s participation, it invites living in the spaces between selves rather than pursuing a single, unified identity.