What is it? To put it in dry scientific language, this is a painful experience of a change in one’s self, or a loss of one’s own identity; or a feeling of detachment from one’s mental processes, despite the fact that the actual ability of self-perception is not impaired (the person knows who he is, his memory is not impaired, he correctly names the emotions he experiences) This is a disorder of consciousness in which the perception of one’s own self is disrupted. All events occur “as if not with me,” feelings are not complete. I am haunted by a feeling of “erasing,” the disappearance of personality. All “subtle”, complex emotions disappear. It differs from derealization, in which it is not I who seems unreal, but the world around me. In fact, there can be a lot of symptoms and all of them are unusual: A feeling of absence of thoughts in the head, the perception of one’s own body as someone else’s, a complete absence of “mood,” that is, even a bad feeling slowing down or even stopping time Disappearance of imaginative thinking, fantasy The feeling of “jame vu” is the opposite of deja vu. That is, a familiar and familiar environment seems new. You could probably list them for a long time, as many people as there are so many specific symptoms of depersonalization. Why does our psyche need such a complex mechanism? The most obvious explanation is a defensive reaction in response to stress. The psyche, as it were, preserves itself until better times. We stop experiencing emotions, act like machines, dryly and rationally - all this helps to survive in a critical situation. But sometimes depersonalization drags on for months, or even years, and therapy is very difficult. What is this - a malfunction of the mechanism, an error in the functioning of the brain? A psychiatrist would probably say that. A Gestalt therapist or psychodynamicist will answer - a person does not allow himself to experience those emotions that were suppressed in a stressful situation. We need to help him realize and feel them, to break through the barrier. The existential therapist will refer to Sartre, namely to the novel “Nausea,” where the derealization-depersonalization syndrome is described with stunning beauty from the inside. From his point of view, depersonalization is a collision with the basic existential truth of the meaninglessness of life. We don’t feel life until we give it meaning, some kind of ultimate goal. I think everyone is right in their own way.