Read complete books and articles on: Dissociative Disorders

Multiple Personality - a very rare psychological disorder in which a person has two or more distinct personalities, each with its own thoughts, feelings, and patterns of behavior. The personalities often are direct opposites and dominate at different times, with abrupt transitions triggered by distressful events or memories. Each may be entirely unaware of the other but aware of unexplained gaps in remembered time. In psychiatry the condition is known as dissociative identity disorder. The term "split personality," denoting schizophrenia, refers to an unrelated disorder in which the split (separation) is between thought and feeling.

Multiple personality was first recognized and described by the French physician Pierre Janet in the late 19th cent. Public awareness of the disorder increased in contemporary times after a case was the subject of The Three Faces of Eve (1957). In the 1980s and early 90s, such factors as recognition of child abuse, public interest in memories recovered from childhood (whether of actual or imagined events), allegations of so-called satanic ritual abuse, and the willingness of many psychotherapists to assume a more directive role in their patients' treatment, led to what came to be regarded as a rash of overdiagnoses of multiple personality.

The cause of multiple personality is not clearly understood, but the condition seems almost invariably to be associated with severe physical abuse and neglect in childhood. It is believed that amnesia, the key to formation of the separate personalities, occurs as a psychological barrier to seal off unbearably painful experiences from consciousness. The disorder often occurs in childhood but may not be recognized until much later. Social and psychological impairment ranges from mild to severe. The primary treatment is psychotherapy to help the individual integrate the separate personalities.

See study by J. Acocella (1999).

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11 of the Best Books and Articles on: Dissociative Disorders

as selected by Questia librarians

1.

Dialogues with Forgotten Voices: Relational Perspectives on Child Abuse Trauma and Treatment of Dissociative Disorders » Read Now
by Harvey L. Schwartz. 520 pgs.

Collections: Psychology, Entire Library

Harvey Schwartz's territory is the severe end of the child sexual abuse continuum, where victims' experiences are so unthinkable and their adaptations so bizarre that the rest of us are tempted to pronounce them fictions -- whereupon we become complicity by subverting the survivors' struggles to...
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Harvey Schwartz's territory is the severe end of the child sexual abuse continuum, where victims' experiences are so unthinkable and their adaptations so bizarre that the rest of us are tempted to pronounce them fictions -- whereupon we become complicity by subverting the survivors' struggles to heal. Schwartz synthesizes trauma theory and relational psychoanalysis to make sense of perpetrator, collaborator, and victim pathologies, and exposes the tortuous double-binds of therapy for and with dissociative patients. His office is the last stop on a kind of underground treatment railroad; his say-it-isn't-so case material reverberates throughout.
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2.

Psychological Concepts and Dissociative Disorders » Read Now
by Raymond M. Klein, Benjamin K. Doane. 361 pgs.

Collections: Psychology, Entire Library

...Psychological Concepts and Dissociative Disorders -ii- Psychological Concepts and Dissociative Disorders Edited by Raymond M. Klein...Data Psychological concepts and...
3.

Splintered Reflections: Images of the Body in Trauma » Read Now
by Jean Goodwin, Reina Attias. 315 pgs.

Collections: Psychology, Entire Library

In trauma, when words fail, the body begins to speak. How can clinicians accurately and attentively "hear" the body and understand its messages? Useful both as a text and a professional handbook, Splintered Reflections is a detailed review of the physical symptoms and body-image distortions found...
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In trauma, when words fail, the body begins to speak. How can clinicians accurately and attentively "hear" the body and understand its messages? Useful both as a text and a professional handbook, Splintered Reflections is a detailed review of the physical symptoms and body-image distortions found after trauma, as well as a textbook of methods aimed at repairing the broken metaphors of the body so that a healthy mind-body relationship can be restored.
Among the various psychotherapeutic techniques explored are Freudian psychoanalytic theory, attachment theory, and trauma theory, all synthesized to form an interlocking framework within which the therapist can effectively listen, and stay with the messages from the patient's body. The reader is guided by detailed clinical examples drawn from an international group of trauma therapists that includes Barry Cohen, Richard Kluft, Bruce Perry, Valerie Sinason, and Onno van der Hart.
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4.

Rewriting the Soul: Multiple Personality and the Sciences of Memory » Read Now
by Ian Hacking. 332 pgs.

Collections: Psychology, Entire Library

Twenty-five years ago one could list by name the tiny number of multiple personalities recorded in the history of Western medicine, but today hundreds of people receive treatment for dissociative disorders in every sizable town in North America. Clinicians, backed by a grassroots movement of...
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Twenty-five years ago one could list by name the tiny number of multiple personalities recorded in the history of Western medicine, but today hundreds of people receive treatment for dissociative disorders in every sizable town in North America. Clinicians, backed by a grassroots movement of patients and therapists, find child sexual abuse to be the primary cause of the illness, while critics accuse the MPD community of fostering false memories of childhood trauma. Here the distinguished philosopher Ian Hacking uses the MPD epidemic and its links with the contemporary concept of child abuse to scrutinize today's moral and political climate, especially our power struggles about memory and our efforts to cope with psychological injuries. In this brilliant and provocative new book, Ian Hacking fixes his searching gaze on the hot topic of multiple personality. The results are remarkable.... In Hacking's hands, multiple personality emerges as a paradigmatic case study illuminating basic questions about truth, memory, fact and fiction, about knowledge, science, and identity.... [This book] treats these impossibly difficult problems of knowability in the human sciences with grace and wisdom. DLEllen Herman, Contemporary Psychology The details of Hacking's discussion are enthralling and illuminating. He manages to avoid altogether the sensationalism usually associated with treatments of multiple personality, providing an informative history and raising deep and important philosophical issues. DLMarya Schechtman, Mind
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5.

Handbook of Post-Traumatic Therapy (Chap. 30 "Developing an Inpatient Dissociative Disorders Unit") » Read Now
by Mary Beth Williams, John F. Sommer Jr. 638 pgs.

Collections: Psychology, Entire Library

This handbook provides both a conceptual and practical framework for diagnosing, treating, and assessing post-traumatic stress in survivors of violence, abuse, war, ethnocultural problems, political torture, and disaster. The in-depth clinical experience of Williams and Sommer helps define a variety...
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This handbook provides both a conceptual and practical framework for diagnosing, treating, and assessing post-traumatic stress in survivors of violence, abuse, war, ethnocultural problems, political torture, and disaster. The in-depth clinical experience of Williams and Sommer helps define a variety of theories and methods for treating children, adults, families, and other groups with various types of post-tramautic stress disorders. They point to specific new kinds of therapies and types of interventions, and discuss new developments and trends for the treatment of post-traumatic stress. This reference volume, with its lengthy bibliography, is designed for students, teachers, and practitioners in the fields of psychology and psychiatry, social work, medicine, and public health.
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6.

From Fragmentation to Wholeness: An Integrative Approach with Clients Who Dissociate, in Perspectives in Psychiatric Care » Read Now
by Marye O'Reilly-Knapp. 7 pgs.

Collections: Psychology, Entire Library

...clients who dissociate. Key words: Dissociation, dissociative disorders, fragmentation, integration As a nurse in...been identified as the principal antecedent to...
7.

Child Dissociation and the Family Context, in Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology » Read Now
by Barton J. Mann, Shirley Sanders. 16 pgs.

Collections: Education, Psychology, Entire Library

...models of the etiology of child dissociative disorders. INTRODUCTION As interest in dissociative disorders has grown, a number of integrative...necessary factor in the...
8.

Dissociative Experiences and Anger Proneness in Late Adolescent Females with Different Attachment Styles, in Adolescence » Read Now
by Elena Calamari, Mauro Pini. 17 pgs.

Collections: Education, Psychology, Entire Library

...connections between anger and dissociative disorders (Loewenstein, 1991; Spiegel...factors in the development of dissociative disorders in subjects classified...
9.

Dissociative Trance Disorder: Clinical and Rorschach Findings in Ten Persons Reporting Demon Possession and Treated by Exorcism, in Journal of Personality Assessment » Read Now
by Stefano Ferracuti, Roberto Sacco, Renato Lazzari. 15 pgs.

Collections: Psychology, Entire Library

...state were studied with the Dissociative Disorders Diagnostic Schedule and...4 4 4.10 1.52 TABLE 2 Dissociative Disorders Interview Schedule Findings...classification...
10.

Borderline Personality Organization, Dissociation, and Willingness to Use Force in Intimate Relationships, in Psychology of Men & Masculinity » Read Now
by Sheree Dukes Conrad, Rachael Stevens Morrow. 12 pgs.

Collections: Psychology, Entire Library

...successful screening for dissociative disorders using cutoff scores ranging...Dissociation: Progress in the Dissociative Disorders, 7, 101-103. Elliott...Dissociative...
11.

Trauma and Dissociation: Treatment Perspectives, in Perspectives in Psychiatric Care » Read Now
by Maryhelen C. Kreidler, Melissa K. Zupancic, Cynthia Bell, Mary Beth Longo. 9 pgs.

Collections: Psychology, Entire Library

...somatization, and eating disorders. Dissociative identity disorder is the...Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Dissociative Disorders (Steinberg, 1993), and the...Disintegrated...