ABSTRACT
Stephen Mitchell’s words reflect some of the sentiment of Worrell and Denham, but he was referencing a theory in relational psychoanalysis about the human mind in general, and not specifically addressing the profound impairments in living that afflict people with robust dissociative disorders, such as a high incidence of suicidality (Foote et al. 2008). Variety may be the spice of life, but disaggregate mentation due to dissociative process is more like arsenic than oregano. The science behind claims regarding the need for integration and fusion of the diverse self-states of what was
formerly called multiple personality disorder and is now known as dissociative identity disorder (DID) favors the needs for integration and fusion as a logical outcome based upon what was originally 33 collected case studies (Kluft 1984b), but now is in the hundreds. What I describe below is a relational approach to the psychotherapy of dissociative identity disorder that has a sound psychotherapeutic basis, but does not have, as yet, the cumulative case studies to argue that it is superior to the outcomes reported by Kluft. It does echo some of the concerns of Worrell and Denham, but from a relational psychodynamic perspective and multiple self-state model of the human mind.
