Multiple Personality Disorder: Diagnosis, Clinical Features, and Treatment

by Colin A. Ross

This account of multiple personality disorder (MPD) and related dissociative disorders presents the latest findings leading to a new model of MPD and a new therapeutic approach to its treatment. The book examines the large cluster of symptoms and dysfunctions associated with MPD, focusing on diagnosis, clinical features, and the relationship of MPD to other diagnoses. Data and clinical evidence are presented for a widely-accepted, but as yet unproven hypothesis that MPD arises as a dissociative strategy for coping with severe childhood trauma, usually involving physical or sexual abuse.

Genres: Psychology, Mental Health, Nonfiction

400 pages, Hardcover

First published October 10, 1989

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

As my experience increases I continue to run into cases that don't fit into the "typical" categories of mental health problems. Dissociation is a category of problems that has languished in the back alleys of Psychiatry and is therefore irresistible... After my last read on hypnosis I was ready to tackle this quirky book on the infamous DID or multiple personality. Overall there are a lot of fascinating parts to this book, Ross has done his homework. His section on the cognitive distortions underlying the pathology was impressive and informative. The entire idea that one can bring entire cut off elements of the psyche into consciousness using some of his techniques is intriguing. However Ross can come off at times as overenthusiastic and it is easy to imagine how these approaches could go very badly wrong especially in the wrong hands. I don't plan on "calling out alters" any time soon but don't regret reading this fascinating tour of yet another "dark art" in the field.

[Joseph Schrock · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although I believe that Dr. Colin Ross wrote “Dissociative Identity Disorder” principally to encourage his fellow psychiatrists to take DID seriously as a major psychiatric disorder, I bought and read the book in order to gain deeper insights into my own dissociative identity disorders.

I believe that Dr. Ross’s books are the most valuable books on psychiatry/psychology that I have yet encountered. He argues consistently and persuasively against mainstream psychiatry’s obsession with genetics and biology as the root causes of mental disorders. After having read a few of Dr. Ross’ books, I have come to the conclusion that he brings some much-needed sanity into modern, Western psychiatry’s overemphasis on and near obsession with the brain’s genes and innate physiology, very much at the expense of the mentality that interacts with the brain. Psychiatrists would do well to acknowledge that one’s environment (even before birth) can dramatically impact one’s brain development and its extraordinarily delicate functions. One’s psychosocial environment can dramatically participate in and impact one’s moods and mentality so as to shape – and reshape – brain structures to an extent which biologically-based psychiatry gravely fails to seriously address.

I will be harsh with modern psychiatry to the point of declaring that Dr. Ross’s books present, for sufficiently astute readers, a bright light contrasting with much of mainstream psychiatry’s near-bankrupt overvaluation of brain science at the expense of mentality and spirituality.

[Marla · Rating 4 out of 5]

finally, a readable exploration of the issue that doesn't suck.