ABSTRACT
This chapter designs the diagnostic criteria for the dissociative subtype of schizophrenia so that they could easily be incorporated in a future edition of the DSM. Prominent dissociative symptoms include auditory hallucinations, amnesia, depersonalization, and the existence of distinct identities or personality states. The core of the subtype is the dissociative phenomenology: voices tending to have structured characteristics; voices tending to interact with each other and outside people; and the relative absence of severe cognitive disorganization or thought disorder. Thought disorder can occur on a transient basis due to internal hyperarousal, chaos, and trauma reenactment, but most of the time the individual is lucid and rational. Polythetic criterion sets tend to be more flexible and open than monothetic ones. Also, polythetic criterion sets in the DSM-IV-TR tend to have more items; therefore they provide a richer description of a given disorder.
