(Ridgeview Institute and the International Society for the Study of Multiple Personality and Dissociation, 1991-09) Barach, Peter M. M.
Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) can be viewed as a disorder of attachment. Bowlby (1969, 1973, 1980, 1988) described how the emotionally neglected (passively abused) child detaches from internal and external signals that would normally lead him to search for a parent; the MPD literature uses the label "dissociation" for the same state which Bowlby called "detachment." Upon the detached state are superimposed the sequelae of active abuse. From this perspective, many of the problematic transference phenomena in the treatment of MPD result from reactivation in the transference of ethologically adaptive attachment behavior. The patient's difficulties in
maintaining boundaries, periods of sudden withdrawal, and eventual movement through a period of anxious attachment, represent steps towards internalization of a secure base of attachment.
