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Psychological fragmentation is a state where a person’s identity, memories, or thoughts split into disconnected parts instead of forming a single, whole self. It often happens as a defence mechanism against severe stress or trauma, causing emotional numbness, memory gaps, or sudden shifts in behavior

Relative autonomy in psychology refers to the degree to which a person’s behaviour is self-determined rather than controlled by external pressures. Found within Self-Determination Theory, it measures where an individual’s motivation falls on a continuous spectrum from complete external control to total internal choice

Phenomenological autonomy views self-determination through lived experience, embodiment, and reflection rather than abstract rationality. It argues that true agency emerges from how a person physically and emotionally inhabits their world, moving beyond traditional, isolated models of choice

Feeling-toned complexes (from the German gefühlsbetonter Komplex) are groups of memories, ideas, and images clustered around an emotional core. Coined by Carl Jung, these autonomous psychic units function like separate sub-personalities. When triggered by a life event, they hijack normal ego control and drive sudden emotional reactions

Dialogical Self Theory (DST) views the human mind not as a single fixed ego, but as a “society of mind”. Created by psychologist Hubert Hermans and others, it states that our personality contains many shifting “I-positions” that talk, argue, and agree with each other like characters in a story

Automatisms are automatism actions or behaviours performed without conscious knowledge, intention, or control. The term spans multiple fields including medicine, law, and art, describing involuntary movements or creative processes driven outside normal waking awareness

Pierre Marie Félix Janet; French; 30 May 1859 – 24 February 1947) was a pioneering French psychologist, physician, philosopher, and psychotherapist in the field of dissociation and traumatic memory.

Our knowledge of who we are is mediated by what we doctors of the mind call our self-schemata… cognitive generalisations derived from experience that organise and guide the processing of self-related information, and proposed that these structures may develop in particular domains of a person’s life.

A self-schema is a cognitive mental structure that organizes how an individual perceives, remembers, and evaluates information about themselves. It includes core traits like extraversion, athleticism, or intelligence that a person considers vital to their identity

Essentialism is a concept with primary meanings in Philosophy and Personal Development: the view that objects or ideas possess unchanging, inherent core properties, or the disciplined practice of focusing strictly on what matters most while eliminating non-essentials