Multiple Selves, Multiple Voices

The book draws upon the exciting and illuminating understanding of trauma and dissociation that has developed within the last decade and shows how this can transform our view of many severe personality disorders. MPD is presented as a disorder based upon trauma and pretence - a pretence which structures the personality. The author explores the implications of working with personalities structured around trauma and pretence. The many complex and bewildering aspects of the therapeutic process are discussed. About the Author x

Series Preface Mark G. Willaims xi

Preface xiii

Acknowledgements xvi

Chapter 1 Dissociation 1

Chapter 2 A Reconsideration of Freud's Views of Trauma 16

Chapter 3 Back to Janet: Early Studies of Trauma, Repression and Dissociation 29

Chapter 4 The Effects of Trauma and Abuse on the Developing Self 41

Chapter 5 The Effects of Trauma and Abuse upon Internal and External Object Relations, Belief Systems, and Psychobiology 60

Chapter 6 Remembering, Forgetting and Confabulating: Terror in the Consulting Room 73

Chapter 7 Multiple Personality Disorder/Dissociative Identity Disorder 103

Chapter 8 What is Going on in Multiple Personality Disorder/Dissociative Identity Disorder? 121

Chapter 9 Therapeutic Considerations with MPD/DID 140

Chapter 10 Illustration of Therapy with MPD/DID: A Composite Fictitious Case - Discussion 160

Chapter 11 Reflections of Evil: The Mystery of Deep Perversion 170

Epilogue 185

Appendix: Guidelines for Patients Regarding Memories of Childhood Events 188

References 191

Index 203

Phil Mollon is a member of the Independent Group within the British Psychoanalytical Society. He is also a clinical psychologist, and trained in psychotherapy at the Tavistock Clinic.

A large number of difficult patients who self-harm and hear voices, but who are not schizophrenic, are sometimes diagnosed as having a borderline personality disorder, but may often be better understood as suffering from trauma-based dissociative disorder, the most extreme form of which is Multiple Personality/Dissociative Identity Disorder. This is a book of clinical, theoretical and historical importance. Drawing on exciting recent developments in work on trauma and dissociation, Phil Mollon provides a clinically based conceptual model and account of the therapeutic process with patients whose personalities are structured around trauma and pretence. The complexities and hazards of the process are fully considered, as are the problems of Recovered Memory and Pseudomemory. The author illustrates the concepts and process by a detailed account of therapy with MPD/DID, and the specific problem of the perverse sexual abuse of children is dealt with in a chapter on the nature of deep perversion and evil. Trauma and dissociation present challenges to both psychoanalysis and mainstream psychiatry and clinical psychology. Therapists, counsellors and nurses who work within the cognitive or analytic approaches to assessment and treatment will welcome this thoughtful and useful book.