Author note: Rather than embedding hyperlinks throughout the text, I am listing them by titles at the bottom.
Early on the morning of September 18th, 2025, I generated a post with the title: A Different Kind of Homewrecker: When the Inner Antagonist Gets Exteriorized and Embodied.
By mid-afternoon I was able to recognize something of my own deeper process, and see my choice in words – labeling one party as a homewrecker – as evidence of my own passive aggressive defenses. I then re-titled it: A Very Serious Microfracture in Communication: When the Inner Antagonist Gets Exteriorized and Embodied.
Yes I was hurt. Yes I was deeply saddened by the very real impact of the activation of an Exteriorization of an Inner Antagonist on our friend group. And then, reflecting on my agitation about it all, I was able to begin to connect with my anger. I recognized it, felt it, struggled against it, and finally dropped down into it. It seemed we were all hijacked – at some level – by the emotion. What we can see from the outside looking in, in the face of a strong, triggering perturbation (how about that word!) provides a snapshot of our core defenses. And it seems psyche’s channel changing super power is dissociation. Why might we be so conflict avoidant?
Recall Bromberg’s observation: “When emotional experience is traumatic (more than the mind can bear), it remains unsymbolized cognitively, and the mind recruits the normal mental function of dissociation as a means of controlling both the triggering of unprocessed emotion schemas that were created by trauma and the release of ungovernable affect of hyperarousal that could threaten to destabilize its function.” It is helpful to recognize this core fear concerning the potential release of the ungovernable affect of hyperarousal that could threaten to destabilize its (the mind’s) function. I believe this detail may be at the center of the Adverse Childhood Experiences research. Our survival depends on our ability to do whatever it takes to change the channel, rather than risk falling apart, symbolically getting eaten alive or thrown on the broiler.
Back to my process: I could begin to see how my decision to write about my/our process, through the lenses of my model, was clearly in the service of my own dissociation of how upset I was at the time of the microfracture. Turning to my symbol system as a way to “work” with the complexity can also be seen as a candidate for my “mistake” and the “… the endless repetition of the mistake…” in DH Lawrence’s poem Healing. As in I learned how to defensively go into thinking and analyzing rather than simply feeling feelings. From this perspective, I relied on my tried and (not!)true partial cure defenses. More on that later.
Bromberg makes the point that what the patient needs to get better is for the important other, therapist, whomever can consciously participate, to bring their own enactments to the table. For each of us, how sensitive are we in tracking our own moments of dissociation? What happens if we become dedicated to bringing them forward at our first opportunity? It is another way of saying, best practice is to own your own stuff. Try to spot the evidence of your own “raw material” driving your vulnerability to a microfracture.
In recognizing the frame “A Different Kind of Homewrecker” was in reality name calling and assigning blame to one party, othering that person if you will – I could see the evidence of my own dissociation. I was caught in/participating in the split. Yes, the actions and impacts driven by the Exteriorization of an Inner Antagonist does pull mightily for that split. We can work on being in the presence of powerful energies/affects which pull for devolving into an identification with one side or pole (think for example of the pair: Dominant Harshness versus Vulnerable Woundedness) of our own complexes, without becoming complexed ourselves. See Edinger’s discussion on Emotion and Invulnerability to Fire for an image of this important super power here.
As it happens, the very best clues for which complexes are driving our enactments can be found in how it all feels when it goes down. In the immediate aftermath of a complex activation, what is palpably present in the room will, like a dream state, be an out-picturing of the core conflict(s). By this, we start with the basic image of The Experiential State; something has happened and the two participants in the scene each have their full expressions and affects associated directly to what just happened. This is psyche’s shorthand for bringing forward our entire history with regards to loving. See Representations Averaged and Generalized over Time to read more about how this comes out of our earliest infant experiences.
Beyond my theorizing, I now need to say something about my complex activation, my vulnerability to the blur: working from the conflict in the room, what could I learn about my Inner Antagonist? What was I projecting into the room onto someone who could carry it for me? Over a few days of process with myself and my wife, I landed on the presence, in the room, of a He-She-They-Who-Structures-with-a-Vengeance function/figure/other/antagonist complex. What was revealed through this encounter was the degree to which I continue to suffer – not consciously enough – with a less than relational, rather rigid, would be director. Like a critical parent introject, a task master who doesn’t get a more balanced approach. I have this longstanding sensitivity to what I perceive as others, who would in choosing for themselves, in effect choosing for me. Part of how this opened things up for me was in playing it out as a core couple complex dynamic. When can we discern He-She-They-Who-Structures-with-a-Vengeance is in the room? Of course my wife and I have different ways of approaching structuring our world(s). While I would like to share more on this soon, I’m going to leave it there for right now.
Importantly, we are all dreaming this dream together. Or rather, our complexes are co-creating this shared dream state. The key to sorting this out is asking the question in what ways is this my dream? And at the same time, in what ways it is each person’s dream? How can we understand what it looks like if each of us is having an encounter with an exteriorized inner antagonist. If you can only talk about your experience of an actual other person, you have locked out exploration of how that actual other has been employed by psyche to carry something for you in your dream process. This gets into Freud’s manifest versus latent contents and psyches use of compromise formations or what I like to think of as psyche’s camouflage tool (see below). When an actual beloved or friend shows up/populates a dream, we do want to consider all the associations to that person; we do not want to stop there. In an Active Imagination session, we can ask the recognizable outer world figure to take off their mask and show us who is calling from an earlier place. Who is showing up now via the dream, looking for dialogue and integration or release?
Again, the key concept here is enactments drive microfractures in communication. Bromberg suggests we make our own dissociative process available to working through the rupture. Modeling the capacity to sit together and find new language for what just happened is the work of becoming conscious. The sub-symbolic mode of experience needs our help, in relationship with each other, to move into the symbolic mode of experience.
Today I touched on my recognition after the fact, of my own dissociative reaction to a powerful activation in a friend group. I wanted to zero in on the startling and critically relevant implications of Bromberg’s discussion of this work: sitting together in the aftermath of enactments (micro/macro-fractures in communication), bringing our/my own dissociative experience to the table, is how we can support our cycles of rupture, repair and reconciliation. We honor those not-consciously-bidden parts of ourselves who show up, in the service of the re-integration of our lost selves/self-states. While early in life reliance on dissociative defenses was life saving, it becomes life-denying.
Enactments: Setting the table…together
Source: Wilkinson on Microfractures in Communication, Rupture, Repair, and Reconciliation
Source: Sandner/Beebe on Dominant Harshness and Vulnerable Woundedness Complex Split
Representation of Persona Submitting to Emotion
On The Importance of Getting Triggered
Co-Created, Dissociation Enabled Enactments
Emotion and Invulnerability to Fire
Couple Power Struggle as Compromise Formation?
Philip Bromberg on Self – States
Helpful posts for background:
Healing Within the Blur 
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