title: Is there really a dissociative taxon on the dissociative experiences scale?
abstract: The Dissociative Experiences Scale (DES; Bernstein & Putnam, 1986) and MMPI (Hathaway & McKinley, 1940) were administered to 1,237 college students to evaluate MMPI differences for nonpathological (n = 90) or pathological dissociators (n = 111) and nondissociative controls (n = 476). MMPIs of both dissociation groups had multiple clinical elevations with a mean 8-9 code. People classified in the pathological dissociation group had MMPI scores remarkably similar to those in the normal dissociation group. The DES and DES-Taxon (DES-T; Waller, Putnam, & Carlson, 1996) were also highly correlated. Our findings strongly suggest the DES-T does not uniquely identify categorical dissociation.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychological Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907-2004, USA. merritt@psych.purdue.edu
authors.forename: Rebecca Davis
authors.initials: RD
authors.lastname: Merritt
authors.forename: Sungeun
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: You
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D004213:Dissociative Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008950:MMPI; D008297:Male; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D010555:Personality Inventory; D015203:Reproducibility of Results