Dissociative Identity Disorder and Pseudo-Hysteria

The diagnostic validity of dissociative identity disorder (DID) continues to inspire controversy, with some commentators claiming that DID is a modern variant of “hysteria”; that is, attention-seeking behavior. The author asserts that DID is indeed a valid psychiatric disorder, and believes that this skeptical reaction can largely be attributed to a specific set of transference/countertransference interactions that these patients tend to inspire. The paper delineates several clinical features of DID that can easily be mistaken for hysterical phenomena, and attempts tofind the roots of this confusion in the DID patients’ experience of interpersonal powerlessness, which leads them to present their symptoms in an unconvincing, “hysterical” manner. Confusion between the vertical split seen in the dissociative disorders and the horizontal split characteristic of the classic hysterical personality is discussed, as is the powerful effect of observer bias in creating hysterical-appearing phenomena. The term “pseudo-hysteria” is used to denote a situation in which a genuine psychiatric disorder, DID, is perceived as an hysterical production.