Dissociation : Vol. 3, No. 2 (June 1990)

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Dissociation : Vol. 3, No. 2, p. 070-080 : Dreamlike thought and dream mode processes in the formation of personalities in MPD
(Ridgeview Institute and the International Society for the Study of Multiple Personality and Dissociation, 1990-06) Franklin, Jean
In multiple personality disorder (MPD), the overwhelming traumas induce dissociative states of consciousness in which the child uses developmental dreamlike thought in a dream mode of mental processing to form personalities to cope with or defend against the traumas. The personalities may then continue to be structured by schemas and substrates based on reality, fantasy, further dreamlike thought, and other shaping influences, such as identification. Evidence for this view is: (1) When MPD first develops, much of the child's normal thought is dreamlike. (2) The nature and elaboration of the personalities from childhood to adult MPD parallel the development of children's waking thought and their dreams. (3) MPD patients often use dreamlike thought (such as imagery, symbols, creative imagination, and personification) in the dream mode of processing in which personalities are intensely hallucinated, have delusions of experiential reality, often experience amnesia, show intense emotion, have varying orientations to time, place, and person, and use parallel and analogical processing.