This paper presents the results of an action research study into the acute care experience of Dissociative Identity Disorder. The study, which was grounded in principles of critical social science, utilized focus group interviews and narrative construction. Nurses and patients are under-represented in all clinical evaluation and their voices need to be heard if services are to be truly collaborative. Findings of the study extend intrapsychic theories of trauma to emphasize the interpersonal relationship between nurse and person who can work together to facilitate recovery from trauma, make connections both intra and interpersonally and build resilience.

In the following stray notes and remarks, the writer details a trip to various places of medical and psychological interest which he made, in company with Professor Laycock, through some parts of France, Savoy, and Switzerland.

The various forms under which morbid impulses and perverted instincts present themselves have generally been classed by authors under “Moral Insanity” † and “Emotional Insanity,” † or each has been titled a mania or monomania. Their occurrence is found to be regulated by the degree of civilisation, mode of life–whether in town or country–and the prevailing tendencies of the age, which indelibly stamps them with its characteristic features. The classification adopted in the following pages is that of Professor Laycock, § which leads us first to examine those connected with the nourishment of the being.

At a time when so much public interest is manifested in lunatic asylums and their inmates, it scarcely requires the memory of the illustrious Pinel, Esquirol, and Guislain, or the knowledge of what has been done by the present Morel, Baillarger, Falret, Moreau, &c., to tempt one over the Channel, more especially when a visit to the far-famed Gheel is contemplated. So in July and August last, having leave of absence from my duties to spend some weeks in rest and recreation, I resolved to find both in a visit to the French and Belgian asylums, having learned by experience that to travel without an object is neither profitable nor pleasant. Believing that what interested me, and regarding which my curiosity had sometimes been excited at home, might not be devoid of interest to others, I made “notes” regularly of what I observed, recording facts and impressions on the spot and on the day, rather in the order of observation than of coherence, and striving only to observe well, and to state the exact truth.

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