Interidentity amnesia for neutral, episodic information in dissociative identity disorder.
Interidentity amnesia is considered a hallmark of dissociative identity disorder (DID) in clinical practice. In this study, objective methods of testing episodic memory transfer between identities were used. Tests of both recall (interference paradigm) and recognition were used. A sample of 31 DID patients was included. Additionally, 50 control subjects participated, half functioning as normal controls and the other half simulating interidentity amnesia. Twenty-one patients subjectively reported complete one-way amnesia for the learning episode. However, objectively, neither recall nor recognition scores of patients were different from those of normal controls. It is suggested that clinical models of amnesia in DID may be specified to exclude episodic memory impairments for emotionally neutral material.
Huntjens
Rafaële J C
RJ
Department of Clinical Psychology and Reseach Institute for Psychology and Health, Utrecht University, The Netherlands. r.huntjens@fss.uu.nl
Postma
Albert
A
Peters
Madelon L
ML
Woertman
Liesbeth
L
van der Hart
Onno
O
D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect; D000647:Amnesia / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology*; D015331:Cohort Studies; D004213:Dissociative Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D012720:Severity of Illness Index