ABSTRACT
The Treatment of Patients with Dissociative Disorders study, based at Towson University, Maryland USA, recruited about 290 therapists and their clients from eighteen countries, making it the largest and only international study of dissociative disorders. Most people at the severe end of the dissociative spectrum, living with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) or Dissociative Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (DDNOS), have suffered severe, and often organised criminal trauma and abuse in childhood, against a background of disorganised attachment. Complex dissociative disorders including DID and DDNOS are widely understood as complex forms of post-traumatic stress disorder, where some combination of severe neglect, trauma, and abuse has occurred in childhood, against a background of disorganised attachment and across a child's developmental stages. A child's growing attachment to parent figures is crucial to every aspect of development. It is during interactions with attachment figures that the nervous system is nourished and developed.
