This paper considers the affinities among clinical psychiatry, relational psychoanalysis theories, and post-modern literature, particularly in the work of Paul Auster. A recurrent psychopathological entity is found throughout Paul Auster`s major novels: post traumatic stress disorder in which dissociation symptoms prevail. This is analyzed as a metaphor of an underlying conception of selfhood, which considers the latter as a shifting, dynamic, and contingent process