dissociative

American  

[di-soh-see-uht-iv, di-soh-shee-ayt-iv, -suht-iv] / dɪˈsoʊ si ət ɪv, dɪˈsoʊ ʃiˌeɪt ɪv, -sət ɪv /

adjective

1. Psychiatry. relating to or exhibiting a condition in which a group of mental processes is split off from the main body of consciousness, as in amnesia or certain forms of hysteria.

2. Physical Chemistry. relating to, tending toward, or exhibiting the reversible resolution or decomposition of a complex substance into simpler components.

3. relating to a disjunction or separation between two or more things.

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Example Sentences

There are so many overwhelming ideas in “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” that, at over two hours, it does have the sense of a dissociative doomscroll.

From Los Angeles Times • Feb. 12, 2026

So I think the album is very representative of that experience and I think why it continues to resonate for subsequent generations is, it’s very dissociative.

From Los Angeles Times • Nov. 24, 2025

One of the main protagonists in “The Dark Tower” series, Susannah Dean, is a Black woman with dissociative identity disorder.

From Salon • Nov. 9, 2025

Dr. Braun gained renown in the early 1980s as an expert in two of the most popular and controversial areas of psychiatric treatment: repressed memories and multiple personality disorder, now known as dissociative identity disorder.

From New York Times • Apr. 12, 2024

Very few had taken to agriculture, for which, indeed, the dry soil was seldom fitted, and the half-nomadic life of stock-farmers, each pasturing his cattle over great tracts of country, confirmed their dissociative instincts.

From Impressions of South Africa by Bryce, James Bryce, Viscount