Dissociative disorder

Dissociative disorder is the condition the psychiatrist suspects when Jung Daehyun first describes Kim Jiyoung’s episodes: at times she becomes, with striking completeness, another woman she knows. The psychiatrist initially sets that possibility aside in favor of postnatal depression that developed into childcare depression, but Jiyoung’s history and the course of treatment lead him to reconsider how quickly he interpreted her symptoms.

Episodes and Clinical Course

Jung Daehyun consults the psychiatrist alone about his wife’s symptoms and possible treatment. He has arranged a therapy session for her because she has not been sleeping well and seems stressed. Jiyoung appears not to recognize the extent of his concern; she thanks him and says she has felt blue and enervated, suspecting that she may have maternity blues.

The episodes are not presented as a joke or deliberate performance. Jiyoung becomes women she knows, some living and some dead, and the transformation is described as complete. The psychiatrist’s first knowledge of these episodes comes from Daehyun’s account, which prompts him to consider dissociative disorder, a condition he had previously encountered only through case studies.

After his initial session with Jiyoung, however, the psychiatrist settles on what he considers a typical case of postnatal depression progressing into childcare depression. As therapy continues, his confidence in that diagnosis weakens. Jiyoung does not readily volunteer accounts of suffering or injustice, nor does she repeatedly return to childhood trauma; when encouraged, though, she retrieves long-buried memories and describes them calmly and coherently. He begins to question whether he diagnosed her too hastily, without claiming that his earlier diagnosis was simply wrong.

Treatment and Reassessment

By 2016, Jiyoung attends 45-minute sessions twice a week. Her symptoms have become less frequent but have not disappeared. The psychiatrist prescribes antidepressants and sleeping pills to address her depression and insomnia. The record therefore describes some improvement while leaving the dissociative episodes and the broader condition unresolved.

The treatment narrative turns on a change in the psychiatrist’s understanding as much as on the reduction in symptoms. He recognizes that Jiyoung can recount her experiences articulately once given room to do so, and that her restrained manner should not be taken as proof that her circumstances are untroubled. Her sessions prompt him to see a world he had not previously been aware of, rather than to treat the original diagnostic label as a complete account of her life.

Gendered Context and the Psychiatrist’s Blind Spots

The psychiatrist links this new awareness to his own wife’s medical career. Though she had been a better student than he in medical school, her path narrowed from seeking a tenured professorship in ophthalmology to working as a contract doctor and eventually leaving medicine. He comes to understand that childbirth and childcare shape women’s lives in ways men can remain unaware of when they are not responsible for those experiences themselves.

His recognition is shown as partial and hard-won. When their son’s school reports troubling behavior and a teacher suspects attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, the psychiatrist initially disagrees. His wife challenges his confidence: he spends little time with the boy and is often occupied with his phone during it. He accepts that her criticism is true, then recounts how she suspends her career to provide intensive daily care. The episode makes his earlier diagnostic certainty part of a wider pattern: professional authority does not guarantee understanding of the lived circumstances being assessed.

That limitation remains visible in his treatment of Lee Suyeon, a valued employee at his clinic who leaves work during a high-risk pregnancy. He recognizes her skill and the loss of patients who choose to end therapy rather than transfer to another counselor, yet concludes that her departure creates problems and that her replacement should be unmarried. The contrast complicates his claim to have learned about women’s lives: new awareness has opened a question, but it has not automatically removed the assumptions through which he sees work and care.

Narrative Significance

Jiyoung’s dissociative episodes bring women’s otherwise obscured experiences into a clinical account, while the psychiatrist’s changing interpretation exposes the limits of that account. His initial impulse is to classify her condition; as he listens to her history, he recognizes that diagnosis alone cannot explain the pressures surrounding motherhood, employment, and care. The narrative leaves the precise diagnostic reassessment unsettled, emphasizing instead the psychiatrist’s dawning recognition that the patient’s circumstances exceed what he first knew how to see.