Dissociative Processes, Multiple Personality, and Dream Functions

From ancient times on, our dream processes were thought to be the uncovering of unknown connections. It may be that there is some basis to this belief, and that dreams truly represent a mirror of our unconscious and not only random processes moving along according to some brain “computation.” These ideas are supported by some findings that involve connections among dissociative processes, hypnosis, and multiple personality disorder (MPD). From this point of view, MPD represents a very interesting theoretical problem, which may be understood as an extreme example of the dissociative nature of the human psyche. This in turn leads to an understanding of the complex structure of the human psyche and corresponds perfectly to our experience, which says that the pathological often sheds new light on the normal and physiological.