A New View from the Acropolis: Dissociative Identity Disorder

Abstract

The author reviews psychoanalytic viewpoints on dissociation and dissociative identity disorder (DID), the controversial condition previously known as multiple personality. He expands his own contributions to the literature over the last fifteen years, incorporating the burgeoning data from research on disturbances of attachment as precursors to dissociation. Utilizing clinical material, he then contrasts DID with trauma and dissociation in adulthood as well as with schizophrenia. He contends that the complexity and myriad manifestations of this condition warrant deeper psychoanalytic exploration to help elucidate not only its true nature, but also to further our understanding of all psychopathology.

Return of the Repressed: Revisiting Dissociation and the Psychoanalysis of the Traumatized Mind

“…Unfortunately, however, some neurobiologically oriented writers (e.g., van der Kolk 2006) misrepresent psychoanalysis as a left brain–dominated, “rational, executive” form of treatment that fails to address right-brain pathology. This characterization is blatantly inaccurate—consider, for example, the influence of Winnicott and Bion, as well as that of many child analysts (typified by Sugarman 2008)—although psychoanalysis itself has contributed to the fallacy by its long-standing failure to more directly address the impact of dissociative mechanisms (Brenner 2009, 2014; Howell and Itzkowitz 2016; Kluft 2018).…”

Dark MattersIra Brenner, MD: Karnack Books Ltd., 2014

“…Brenner describes the pathology in DID as a disruption in the development of the core self, especially in areas of self‐cohesion, self‐continuity and self‐agency. He also presents his previously described model of a continuum of dissociative character pathology (Brenner, ) and discusses dissociation as a compromise formation, which opens the path for clinicians to work with these patients psychoanalytically.…”