All in the Mind - Many Selves, One Body: Dissociation and early trauma

All in the Mind, hosted by Natasha Mitchell, is one of the best psychology podcasts on the web, and now the show is going off the air. I'm sad about this - but she is moving on to bigger and better things.

In honor of the show's ten years on the radio (ABC Radio National in Australia), they have been posting some of their best shows, including the one below.

Many Selves, One Body: Dissociation and early trauma

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Broadcast: Saturday 22 August 2009

We all dissociate to a degree—compartmentalising major traumatic experiences in our psyche to protect ourselves. But Dissociation Identity Disorder is the extreme end, where a person might present multiple selves or 'alters' to the world without fully knowing it—swapping clothes, life histories and personalities each time they 'switch'. Don't miss this firsthand account.

Transcript

Show

Guests

Professor Warwick Middleton

Brisbane based psychiatrist in private practice Adjunct Professor, School of Public Health, La Trobe University Associate Professor of Psychiatry, University of Queensland Chair, Cannan Institute Director, Trauma and Dissociation Unit, Belmont Hospital

Zoe Farris

Queensland Association of Mental Health

Publications

Title: When Me Means Me: Multiple Personality - A View from the Inside

Author: Zoe Long (now Farris) & Co

Publisher: Queensland Association of Mental Health Inc, 1996 (booklet)

Title: Dissociative Identity Disorder: An Australian series

Author: Warwick Middleton and Jeremy Butler

Publisher: Aust N Z J Psychiatry. 1998 Dec;32(6):794-804

Title: Dissociative Identity Disorder: Multiple Personalities, Multiple Controversies

Author: Scott Lilienfield and Steven Jay Lynn

Publisher: in Science and Pseudoscience in Clinical Psychology (edited by Scott O. Lilienfeld, Steven Jay Lynn, Jeffrey M. Lohr), 2004

Title: A Clinician's Understanding of Dissociation: Fragments of an Acquaintance

Author: Richard P Kluft

Publisher: in Dissociation and Dissociative Disorders: DSM-V and Beyond (edited by Paul F Dell, and John A O'Neill), Routledge, 2009

Title: Historical conceptions of dissociation and psychosis: Nineteenth and earlt twentieth century perspectives on severe psychopathology

Author: Warwick Middleton, Martin Dorahy, Andrew Moskowitz

Publisher: in Psychosis, Trauma and Dissociation (edited by Andrew Moskowitz, Ingo Scahfer and Martin Dorahy), John Wiley and Sons, 2008

Title: A New Model of Dissociative Identity Disorder

Author: Paul F Dell

Publisher: Psychiatric Clinics of North America (Psychaitr Clin N Am), 2006, 1-26

Title: Owning the past, claiming the present - perspectives on the treatment of dissociative patients

Author: Warwick Middleton

Publisher: Australiasian Psychiatry, Vol 13, No 1, March 2005

Title: Remembering the past, anticipating the future

Author: Warwick Middleton, Lisa De Marni Cromer, Jennifer Freyd

Publisher: Australasian Psychiatry, Vol 13, No 3, September 2005

Title: The Persistence of Folly: A Critical Examination of Dissociative Identity Disorder. Part I. The Excesses of an Improbable Concept

Author: August Piper, Harold Merskey

Publisher: Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, Vol 49, No 9, September 2004