Abstract Behavior analytic accounts of Dissociative Identity Disorder, formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder, are rarely presented in depth. This lack of recognition is due to misunderstanding the applicability of the analytic position on abnormality, and related issues. Arguments are made here that behavioral analysis of Dissociative Identity Disorder demystifies and clarifies these behaviors. Behavior analysts can communicate to wider audience by addressing more phenomena of clinical and popular interest. ********** In Phelps (2000) an argument was made that analysis has more relevance to and especially multiple than is commonly presented. Some of the arguments of Phelps are reiterated here and expanded upon. When analytic accounts of or abnormal are introduced, the discussion is usually brief, with references to faulty learning, inadvertent conditioning experience or aberrant models. The brevity is to be valued; it shows the analyst's hesitation to speculate in the absence of data as to how particular was acquired (Thompson & Williams, 1985). Further, behavioral theorists are reluctant to attribute explanatory or causal status to mental or intrapsychic or other variables inherent to the individual as cause of the individual's (Skinner, 1974). Nevertheless, this hesitation to speculate has led many writers to conclude that since analysts have little to say or they say the same things repeatedly about different behaviors, analytic contributions are irrelevant (Phelps, 2000). On the other hand, psychoanalytic, humanistic and cognitive theorists can also be accused of saying the same things about very different behaviors. A proposal is made here to re-evaluate behavioral accounts of and their relation to Multiple Personality Disorder (American Psychiatric Association, 1987), now called Dissociative Identity Disorder or DID (American Psychiatric Association, 1994). WHAT IS PERSONALITY IN BEHAVIORAL TERMS? In 1937, Gordon Alport catalogued some 50 definitions of personality. Little has changed except there are now more definitions and theories of personality; most refer to internal or intrapsychic variables that in vaguely defined ways cause person's but do not refer to as being (Hayes, Follette, & Follette, 1995; Pronko, 1988). Conversely, few behavioral theorists have written extensively about or defined the behaviors of (Phelps, 2000). Since is behavior, other writings are pertinent without specifically addressing or granting privileged status to personality. Behavioral theory is theory. For instance, Skinner (1953) argued that personalities represent topographical subdivisions of behavior and that particular was tied to particular type of occasion ... given discriminative stimulus, (p. 285). Some twenty years later, Skinner echoed his prior position: a self or is at best repertoire of imparted by an organized set of contingencies. (Skinner, 1974, p. 149). In their extensive treatment of and learning, Dollard & Miller (1950) stated that Human is learned ... We also learn fears, guilt, and other socially acquired motivations ... factors which are characteristic of normal personality, (p. 25.) Correspondingly, Eysenck (1959) stated his position on as being, personality as the sum total of actual or potential behaviour patterns of the person, as determined by heredity and environment, (as quoted in Chesser, 1976, p. 291). Bijou & Baer (1966) saw as the acquisition and effects of contingencies between reinforcement for social behavior, under social SDs, (p. 721). In 1984, Harzem interpreted (characteristic) as being a cluster of functional relations between (1) set of variables and (2) the already-established patterns of an individual, (p. …
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Apr 7, 2024
Yijia Zhu + 3
Open Access
