“DID is often dragged into the debates about recovered and false memory. For example, it might be alleged that a person recovered memories from a state of dissociation. Such a claim reflects a misunderstanding of dissociation and a confusion with repression (Mollon 1998).
If a piece of mental content (e.g. a feeling, a memory, a fantasy, a perception) is in a state of repression, it is not directly available to consciousness. Its existence may be inferred from its displaced and disguised expression. For example, a patient who is angry with the therapist may speak of anger with someone else - a kind of unconscious hinting. Gradually the patient may become more consciously aware of the previously repressed material.
By contrast, the feelings, memories and other mental contents ofdissociated parts of the mind may be quite accessible to consciousness in that state of mind. Those contents may not be available, however, when the patient is in a different state of mind, or when another personality is in executive control. It is not that the objectionable mental content is kept in 'the unconscious (a horizontal splitting, implying a hierarchical gradation of consciousness), but rather that consciousness is distributed among the dissociated parts of the mind.
Thus, in state of mind A, the patient may speak of a narrative of events of which he or she appears completely unaware when in state of mind B. When asked what she thought about the accounts of abuse that she had presented, in a childlike state of mind, during a previous session, a patient replied that she had no idea whether the memories were true or not because they were not her memories. In this way, what is claimed in one state of mind may be disowned in another stale of mind. There may be a repudiation not only of the content of what has been said, but also of the fact of ever having said it.”