Handbook of Dissociation Quotes

“Patients with DID or other dissociative disorders may be misdiagnosed as Schizophrenics on account of their auditory hallucinations, distrust, feelings of depersonalization, and on the MMPI (Kluft, 1987; Spiegel & Fink, 1979; Steingard & Frankel, 1985).”
― Etzel Cardena, Handbook of Dissociation: Theoretical, Empirical, and Clinical Perspectives

“The classic host personality, which usually (over 50% of the time) presents for treatment, nearly always bears the legal name and is depressed, anxious, somewhat neurasthenic, compulsively good, masochistic, conscience-stricken, constricted hedonically, and suffers both psychophysioiogical symptoms and time loss and/or time distortion. While no personality types are invariably present, many are encountered quite frequently: childlike personalities (fearful. recalling traumata, or love-seeking), protectors, helpers-advisors, inner self-helpers (serene, rational, and objective helpers and advisors first described by Allison in 1974), personalities with distinct affective states, guardians of memories and secrets (and of family boundaries), memory traces (holding continuity of memory), inner persecutors (often based on identification with the aggressor), anesthetic personalities (created to block out pain), expressers of forbidden impulses (pleasurable and otherwise, such as defiant, aggressive, or antisocial), avengers (which express anger over abuses endured and may wish to redress their grievances), defenders or apologists for the abusers, those based on lost love objects and other introjections and identifications, specialized encapsulators of traumatic experiences and powerful affects, very specialized personalities, and those (often youthful) that preserve the idealized potential for happiness, growth, and the healthy expression of feelings (distorted by traumata) in others (Kluft, 1984b).”
― Richard P. Kluft, Handbook of Dissociation: Theoretical, Empirical, and Clinical Perspectives

“Undiagnosed DID patients received incorrect diagnoses of schizophrenia in 25% to 40% of cases in two large series (Putnam, 1989; Ross, 1989), while in one series 12% and in the other 16% had received electroconvulsive therapy.”
― Colin A. Ross, Handbook of Dissociation: Theoretical, Empirical, and Clinical Perspectives

“Most DID patients are rather muted compared to those cases incorrectly assumed to epitomize the condition (Kluft, 1985b). The personalities enact adaptational patterns and strategies that developed in the service of defense and survival. Once this pattern, which disposes of upsetting material and pressures rapidly and efficiently, is established, it may be repeated again and again to cope with both further overwhelming experiences and more mundane developmental and adaptational issues.
Once the DID that developed in order to cope with intolerable childhood circumstances has achieved some degree of secondary autonomy, it becomes increasingly maladaptive.”
― Richard P. Kluft, Handbook of Dissociation: Theoretical, Empirical, and Clinical Perspectives

“The often dramatic differences among the personalities are more an arresting epiphenomenon than the core of the condition. Characterological factors, cultural influences, imagination, intelligence, and creativity make powerful contributions to the form taken by the personalities. Most DID patients are rather muted compared to those cases incorrectly assumed to epitomize the condition (Kluft, 1985b). The personalities enact adaptational patterns and strategies that developed in the service of defense and survival. Once this pattern, which disposes of upsetting material and pressures rapidly and efficiently, is established, it may be repeated again and again to cope with both further overwhelming experiences and more mundane developmental and adaptational issues.”
― Richard P. Kluft, Handbook of Dissociation: Theoretical, Empirical, and Clinical Perspectives

“It appears that the picture of DID as the ongoing clash of polarized personality types (e.g., good girl-bad girl, upright citizen-sociopath) is hard to sustain, although such clashes, when they occur, arrest attention and at times become a concern of the forensic psychiatrist. Most patients have personalities that are named, but there may be those who are nameless or whose appellations are not proper names (i.e.. “the slut,” “rage,” etc.).
Child personalities, those who retain long periods of continuous awareness, those who claim to know about all of the others, and depressed personalities are the most frequent types enumerated (Putnam et al.. 1986).”
― Richard P. Kluft, Handbook of Dissociation: Theoretical, Empirical, and Clinical Perspectives