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Chapter Slides
Dissociative Disorders
Dissociative Disorders
These
include four recognized varieties:
psychogenic amnesia,
psychogenic fugue,
dissociative idenity disorder (multiple
personality), and
depersonalization disorder. Again, these
are highly publicized in the media but they are relatively rare.
Dissociative
(Psychogenic)
Amnesia
Amnesia is the temporary or permanent loss of a part or whole of
memory. When this is due to extreme psychosocial stress, it is
labeled psychogenic amnesia. This stress is most often
associated with catastrophic events.
There are four sub-categories of psychogenic amnesia: localized
amnesia, selective amnesia, generalized amnesia and continuous
amnesia.
Localized Amnesia
This is most often an outcome of a
particular event. The disease renders the
afflicted unable to recall the details of an
usually traumatic event such as a violent rape.
This is undoubtedly the most common type of
amnesia.
Selective Amnesia
As it's name implies, this is similar to
localized amnesia except that the memory
retained is very selective. Often a person can
remember certain general occurrences of the
traumatic situation, but not the specific parts
which make it so.
Generalized and Continuous Amnesia
These less common forms of amnesia are
defined as when the diseased either forgets the details of an
entire lifetime, or as in the case of continuous amnesia, they
can't recall the details prior to a certain point in time,
including the present.
Dissociative (Psychogenic) Fugue
Recognized as an independent clinical syndrome, a fugue is simply the addition to generalized amnesia of a flight from family, problem, or location. In highly uncommon cases, the person may create an entirely new life.
Dissociative Identity Disorder (Multiple Personality)
Defined as the occurrence of two or more personalities within the same individual, each of which during sometime in the person's life is able to take control. This is not often a mentally healthy thing when the personalities vie for control.
Symptoms are of course somewhat self-explanatory, but it is important to note that often the personalities are very different in nature, often representing extremes of what is contained in a normal person. Sometimes, the disease is asymmetrical, which means that what one personality knows, the others inherently know.
This is the continued presence of feelings that the person is not oneself or that they can't control their own actions. While these are common human feelings, it is labeled a disorder when it is recurrent and impairs social and occupational function.
Symptoms are a change in the person's perception of themselves. The disease may incur strange feelings that one's limbs are not shaped or sized correctly. It also may cause a sense of being outside of one's body. While self-awareness is extremely distorted, "reality-testing functions" remain intact which denotes an absence of delusions or hallucinations. The person perceives others as mechanical as if they existed in a dream. The afflicted have a constant worry about going insane.