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Understanding Dissociative Disorders
Through Dissociative Signs and Symptoms

Cecilia Pearson

Note: this is only a brief excerpt from the above manuscript to give the reader an overview of dissociative symptoms.

Many patients with dissociative disorders need to express the "memories and feelings connected to their traumas, but are afraid to, because of the fear, pain, anger, and shame connected to them, of which they may not even be conscious" (Franklin, 1988, p.29). Franklin suggests that this leads to a conflict between expression and hiding which often leads to a compromise where the memories and feelings escape through subtle signs of dissociation. In relation to models of suppression and repression, Franklin states that the subtle signs are returns of the dissociated rather than a return of the repressed and that internal or external stressors may serve as triggers which activate these memories.

Loewenstein (1991) in his interview model created to diagnosis MPD through dissociative signs grouped many of these subtle signs or symptoms into a matrix of outlining symptom clusters:

(1) Process (MPD) symptoms:

• Alter attributes
• Passive influence symptoms/interference phenomena
• Hallucinations/pseudohallucination
• Linguistic usage
• Switching

(2) Amnesia Symptoms

• Blackouts/time loss
• Disremembered behavior
• Fugues
• Unexplained possessions
• Inexplicable changes in relationships
• Fluctuations in skills/habits/knowledge
• Fragmentary recall of entire life history
• Chronic mistaken identity experiences
• "Micro"-dissociations

(3) Autohypnosis Symptoms (Manifest by High Hypnotizability)

• Spontaneous trances
• Enthrallment
• Spontaneous age regression
• Negative hallucinations
• Voluntary anesthesia
• Out-of-body experiences
• Trance logic
• Eye roll and switching

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