Dissociative Tendencies And Dissociative Disorders

Journal of Abnormal Psychology 1994, Vol. 103. No. 1,117-124

Copyright 1994 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 0021-843X/94/$3.00

Dissociative Tendencies and Dissociative Disorders
John F. Kihlstrom, Martha L. Glisky, and Michael J. Angiulo
Although dissociative disorders are relatively rare, dissociative experiences are rather common in everyday life. Dissociative tendenciesappear to be modestly related to other dimensions of personality, such as hypnotizability, absorption, fantasy proneness, and some facets of openness to experience. These dispositional variables may constitute diatheses, or risk factors, for dissociative psychopathology, but more complex models relating personality to psychopathology may be more appropriate. The dissociative disorders raisefundamental questions about the nature of self and identity and the role of consciousness and autobiographical memory in the continuity of personality.

The dissociative disorders consist of a group of syndromes whose common core is an alteration in consciousness affecting memory and identity (for recent reviews, see Cardena, LewisFernandez, Bear, Pakianathan, & Spiegel, in press; Kihlstrom, 1992, inpress; Kihlstrom, Tataryn, & Hoyt, 1993; Spiegel & Cardena, 1991). As listed in the revised third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSMIH-R; American Psychiatric Association, 1987), these disorders include psychogenic amnesia, entailing a retrograde amnesia for a limited segment of autobiographical memory; psychogenic fugue, consisting of a retrograde amnesiacovering the person's entire life, plus (at least in the classic cases) a loss of personal identity; multiple personality, in which an individual appears to present two or more different personalities, alternating in control over experience, thought, and action; and depersonalization and derealization, in which the person perceives him- or herself, or the external world, to be unreal or otherwisefundamentally changed. The forthcoming DSM-IV renames some of these syndromes (e.g., dissociative amnesia for psychogenic amnesia and dissociative identity disorder for multiple personality disorder), refines the existing diagnostic criteria somewhat, and adds a few new subcategories (e.g., acute stress disorder and trance and possession disorder), but their essential characterization remainsunchanged. The category of dissociative disorder is almost unique in descriptive psychopathology because the label of the syndrome

John F. Kihlstrom, Martha L. Glisky, and Michael J. Angiulo, Department of Psychology, University of Arizona. Preparation of this article was supported by Grant #MH-35856 from the National Institute of Mental Health, which also supported some of the research reportedherein. We thank Terrence Barnhardt, Melissa Berren, Lawrence Couture, Heather Law, Shelagh Mulvaney, Victor Shames, Michael Valdisseri, and Susan Valdisseri for their comments. Special thanks go to Kenneth Bowers, Edward Frischholz, Steven Lynn, David Spiegel, Auke Tellegen, and David Watson for their incisive comments on an earlier version of this article. Correspondence concerning this articleshould be directed to John F. Kihlstrom, Amnesia & Cognition Unit, Department of Psychology, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85721. Electronic mail should be sent via Internet to kihlstrm@ccit.arizona.edu. or via Bitnet to kihlstrm@arizvms.

identifies the (hypothetical) process underlying the disorders: The dissociative disorders are caused by dissociation.1 The first theoreticalexplanation of dissociation was presented by Janet (1889, 1907) in his descriptive and theoretical accounts of hysteria (for secondary accounts see Ellenberger, 1970; E. R. Hilgard, 1977; Perry & Laurence, 1984; Kihlstrom, 1992, in press; Kihlstrom et al., 1993; van der Hart & Friedman, 1989; van der Kolk & van der Hart, 1989). Janet analyzed mental life into a large number of content-specific elementary...