1.
In calculus, the inverse of differentiation where smaller and smaller rectangles are squeezed together under a graphed curve, yielding an approximation of the area under the curve.
2.
A less than successful governmental policy of forcing individuals from different ethnic and racial backgrounds to relate to one another under duress. Usually reserved for the youngest and most vulnerable members of a given society.
3.
In psychiatry/psychology, the process of blending together the alternate identities (alters) of an individual with Dissociative Identity Disorder (i.e., Multiple Personality Disorder or MPD). May happen spontaneously or through participation in various forms of psychotherapy. Insofar as alters most often represent differing historical and developmental perspectives on traumatic incidents and the participants in those events, integration is similar to putting into one room with the task of solving a common problem:
Both mothers-in-law…
Goths and Young Republicans…
Southern virginal nuns and bawdy earth mothers with belly rings...
Jocks and Geeks…
The part of you that wants to do whatever (desperately!) and the part that knows better and is going to tell Mom on you…
Those who think they are cool and those how know they are not…
Children and Grownups (no contest but the grownups are better at rationalization and control the money)…
The kids who are glad the drunken abusive loser father is getting the hell out and the ones clinging desperately to his pants leg…
Deadheads and everybody else…
The most difficult part of integration is achieving accuracy and congruency of real-time perception after years of compartmentalizing every positive and negative emotion and reaction to life. After years of living pretty much one emotion at a time, she/he is learning the everyday pain of ambivalence.
Yes, sometimes she yells at you, but this one will never hit you. Yes, your boyfriend doesn’t always pay attention to you and disappoints you, but because he’s human, not because he thinks you’re less than a piece of shit. Yes, sometimes your girlfriend/boyfriend tries to kiss you and sneak a hand under your shirt, but it’s because they love you and touching you makes them feel closer to Heaven, not as a preamble to raping you. Yes, you can say no and this one will stop.
If you know someone who’s in the process of integrating, hold them (when you can). Tell them you will be there for them. Do a lot of praying. And try and take care of yourself. Try to remember that the same iron determination that got them through their personal hell will get them through this, too.
For L.