Dissociation : Volume 10, No. 2 (June 1997)

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Dissociation : Volume 10, No. 2, p. 091-103 : Time distortions in dissociative identity disorder: Janetian concepts and treatment
(Ridgeview Institute and the International Society for the Study of Dissociation, 1997-06) Hart, Onno van der, 1941-; Steele, Kathy
This paper addresses the time disturbances DID patients may frequently and intensely experience. Time sense is described as a subset of reality perception. In his pioneering work, Pierre Janet analyzed these time disturbances in terms of degrees of perceived reality. His normative hierarchy of time and related experiences (such as fantasies, ideas, and thoughts) is presented. Janet distinguished two basic ways in which patients manifest their disturbance of reality and time sense: placing accounts of episodes too high in the hierarchy, and placing accounts too low. This distinction is utilized in discussing some ways in which DID patients may suffer time disturbances. Special attention is paid to the ways in which reactivated traumatic memories interfere with the experience of a normal sense of reality and time. Therapeutic change is, in essence, the reorganization of the experience of reality and time. In this paper, therapeutic approaches that address this reorganization are presented within the context of a phase-oriented treatment.