An update on multiple personality disorder. | Semantic Scholar (2025)

The author has described five cases diagnosed multiple personality disorder by another health professional in which iatrogenic influences are clearly evident, and all renounced both the diagnosis and the alleged sex abuse etiology.

It remains to be demonstrated that evaluators can determine whether alter personalities, if they exist, are truly unaware of each other, lack control over other alters' behavior, or are unable to know right from wrong.

The study confirms recent findings in the literature that MPD is not a rare disorder, its sufferers include a preponderance offemales, and it is highly correlated with childhood trauma, especially sexual and physical abuse.

The contemporary diagnostic criteria for multiple personality disorder are vague and overinclusive, there is little literature support for the theory that MPD results from childhood trauma, and many of the techniques used to diagnose and treat the condition reinforce its symptoms.

It is recommended that the diagnosis of MPD be considered in Hispanics with histories of ataque, and the author compares and contrasts her presentation of symptoms with those of the culturally accepted ataque de nervios, or "Puerto Rican syndrome".

It is theorized that the similarities of ataque de nervios may increase the incidence of misdiagnosis of multiple personality disorder in Hispanics and it is recommended that the diagnosis of MPD be considered in Hispan­ ics with histories ofataque.

To improve the detection of patients at high risk for multiple personality disorder, standardized instruments for inquiry about dissociative pathology should be used as part of routine diagnostic assessment.

Patients with DID commonly suffer severe concomitant anxiety, exhibit both affective and somatoform symptoms, and demonstrate phenomena associated with a high degree of hypnotizability.

Proper diagnostic evaluation of a patient suspected of having MPD requires a familiarity with MPD, hypnoticphenomena, and a wide variety of clinical syndromes, as well as sufficient time for the evaluation.

Research on multiple personality disorder has burgeoned, and large-scale investigations indicate that a typical MPD patient is a woman, a victim of childhood abuse, a person whose symptoms meet criteria for other psychiatric disorders, and a person who would employ many psychological defenses.

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A case report is presented and a number of problems in the study of multiple personality are defined; the condition raises questions about ego function, pharmacotherapy, and the therapist himself.

Patients with multiple personality appears to be an adaptive response to various traumata and enables the individual superficially to function sexually because sexual functioning is often dissociated and managed by an alternate personality.

The existence of a clinical syndrome characterized by a core of depressive and dissociative symptoms and a childhood history of significant trauma, primarily child abuse is documents.

The author proposes a detailed theory of the genesis of multiple personality, based on the existing ease literature and on contemporary theories of ego development, which is considered at length.

The progress of therapy was hindered most commonly by the overuse of the mental mechanisms of repression and denial, the continued utilization of secrecy, which began during child abuse, and the production of numerous crises.

The organization of other sections of DSM-III will be discussed, including partial forms of multiple personality disorder which at present receive the unsatisfactory diagnosis of atypical dissociative disorder.

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