Paul F. Dell > Quotes

“My own studies on the natural history of DID indicate only 20% of DID patients have an overt DID adaption on a chronic basis, and 14% of them deliberately disguise their manifestations of DID. Only 6% make their DID obvious on an ongoing basis. Eighty percent have windows of diagnosability when stressed or triggered by some significant event, interaction, situation or date. Therefore, 94% of DID patients show only mild or suggestive evidence of their conditions most of the time. Yet DID patients often will acknowledge that their personality systems are actively switching and/or far more active than it would appear on the surface (Loewenstein et al., 1987).
R.P. Kluft (2009) A clinician's understanding of dissociation. pp 599-623.”
― Paul F. Dell

“Finally, those who do not meet the SCID-D-R standard for "distinct identities or personality states," but who do meet the SCID-D-R's other four standards (for DSM-IV's Criterion A and Criterion B) for DID, receive a SCID-D-R diagnosis of DDNOS-1a.”
― Paul F. Dell, Dissociation and the Dissociative Disorders: DSM-V and Beyond

“Inescapable shock research continues to the present day. Although I am not a PETA person, I think it bears mentioning (again) that other species do not deliberately inflict uncontrollable, inescapable pain. Only humans do this — in the psych lab, in abusive families, in prisons, and in the extreme sadism of sexual psychopaths. Deliberate cruelty and the instrumental use of others is the sole province of homo sapiens.”
― Paul F. Dell

“When treating their first few DID cases, therapists typically focus too much attention on the alters. This focus tends to distract from what is fundamental–the patients’ pervasive dissociative/posttraumatic distress and maladaptation. Has something similar occurred in psychiatry’s view of DID? Have the compelling phenomena of alters distracted us from the matrix of dissociative and posttraumatic symptoms in which alters are embedded?
- Dell, P. F. (2001). Why the Diagnostic Criteria for Dissociative Identity Disorder Should Be Changed, Journal of Trauma and Dissociation, 2 (1).”
― Paul F. Dell

“The thesis that DID is merely a North American phenomenon has been refuted in the past decade by research reports based on standardized assessment from diverse countries, such as from The Netherlands, Turkey, and Germany (Boon & Draijer, 1993; Gast, Rodewald, Nickel, & Emrich, 2001; S ̧ar et al, 1996). Clinicians and researchers should be careful to avoid categorizing a universal human condition as culture-bound.”
― Paul F. Dell, Dissociation and the Dissociative Disorders: DSM-V and Beyond

“The SCID-D-R's standard for "distinct identities or personality states"
(DSM-IV, p. 487) is: "Persistent manifestations of the presence of different personalities, as indicated by at least four of the following:
a) ongoing dialogues between different people;
b) acting or feeling that the different people inside of him/her take control of his/her behavior or speech;
c) characteristic visual image that is associated with the other person, distinct from the subject;
d) characteristic age associated with the different people inside of him/her;
e) feeling that the different people inside of him/her have different memories, behaviors, and feelings;
f) feeling that the different people inside of him/her are separate from his/her personality and have lives of their own" (Steinberg, 1994, p. 106).
[The author believes that it is of considerable importance that none of the SCID-D-R's six criteria for "distinct personalities or personality states" are observable signs; each of the six is a subjective symptom or experience that must be reported to the test administrator. This striking fact supports the contention that assessment of dissociation should be based on subjective symptoms rather than signs (Dell, 2006b. 2009b).]”
― Paul F. Dell, Dissociation and the Dissociative Disorders: DSM-V and Beyond