ABSTRACT
Multiple personality disorder (MPD) is a complex chronic dissociative psychopathology characterized by disturbances of identity and memory (Nemiah, 1981). These disturbances are rather consistent. They change relatively slowly over time in the absence of clinical intervention or major life changes, but may be altered over the passage of many years (Kluft, 1985a, 1991a). The ongoing coexistence of relatively consistent but alternating separate identities (called personalities) associated with recurrent episodes of memory distortion, frank amnesia, or both (episodes that correlate with the alternation of the separate identities) distinguish MPD from all other mental disorders (Kluft, 1985b, 1987a; Putnam, Loewenstein, Silberman, & Post, 1984).
