Abstract
BackgroundA major symptom of Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID; formerly Multiple Personality Disorder) is dissociative amnesia, the inability to recall important personal information. Only two case studies have directly addressed autobiographical memory in DID. Both provided evidence suggestive of dissociative amnesia. The aim of the current study was to objectively assess transfer of autobiographical information between identities in a larger sample of DID patients.MethodsUsing a concealed information task, we assessed recognition of autobiographical details in an amnesic identity. Eleven DID patients, 27 normal controls, and 23 controls simulating DID participated. Controls and simulators were matched to patients on age, education level, and type of autobiographical memory tested.FindingsAlthough patients subjectively reported amnesia for the autobiographical details included in the task, the results indicated transfer of information between identities.ConclusionThe results call for a revision of the DID definition. The amnesia criterion should be modified to emphasize its subjective nature.
Highlights
IntroductionA major symptom of Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID; formerly Multiple Personality Disorder) is dissociative amnesia, an inability to recall important personal information that is too extensive to be explained by ordinary forgetfulness [1]
The results call for a revision of the DID definition
A major symptom of Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID; formerly Multiple Personality Disorder) is dissociative amnesia, an inability to recall important personal information that is too extensive to be explained by ordinary forgetfulness [1]
Summary
A major symptom of Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID; formerly Multiple Personality Disorder) is dissociative amnesia, an inability to recall important personal information that is too extensive to be explained by ordinary forgetfulness [1]. And following a switch to an amnesic identity, we asked the patients to learn a wordlist B containing different words from the same semantic categories, again followed by a free recall test. After a two-hour interval, the amnesic identity (i.e., exposed to list B) performed a surprise recognition test We showed this identity all the words from both lists intermixed with distractor words (i.e., new words from the same semantic categories) and asked it to indicate which words were old (i.e., seen in the learning phase) and which were new. Inconsistent with the hypothesis of interidentity amnesia, participants recognized List A words in their amnesic dissociative identity These results were replicated and extended in a different patient group by Kong et al [14] who included a cross-modal manipulation designed to mitigate implicit memory effects. The aim of the current study was to objectively assess transfer of autobiographical information between identities in a larger sample of DID patients
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