Page 12 - PIECES OF THE PUZZLE Eline Vissia

CHAPTER 1
Personality states
DID is characterized by the development of different types of dissociative personality states. Such states have been classified as neutral personality states (NPS) or trauma-related personality states (TPS) (Reinders et al. 2003, Reinders et al. 2006, Reinders et al. 2012). In an NPS, DID patients concentrate on functioning in daily life. To that end, NPS has full or partial amnesia for traumatic memories, thereby disabling recognition of trauma-related information. In contrast, TPS does have conscious access to the traumatic memories. Personality states have previously also been referred to as neutral identity state (NIS) and trauma-related identity state (TIS) (Reinders et al. 2006, Reinders et al. 2012). The indicators NPS and TPS are derived from the terms “apparently normal part of the personality (ANP)” and “emotional part of the personality (EP)”, respectively, which are used in the Theory of Structural Dissociation of the Personality (TSDP) (Van der Hart, Nijenhuis & Steele 2006, Nijenhuis 2015). This theory defines dissociation as a division of personality into different types of subsystems, each with their own first- person perspective, that is, their own point of view as to who they are, what the world is like, and how they relate to that world (Nijenhuis 2015). Nijenhuis and Van de Hart (2011) outline a corporation metaphor, in which dissociation can be compared with a corporation that encompasses several departments and temporary projects. The corporation lacks a central management and is organized by interactions among all departments and employees. There is no hierarchically highest level dissociative part that guides lower level parts. The metaphor reflects the fact that no matter how dissociated and different parts of the personality may be, they are still linked and together they constitute a whole system (Braude 1995, Van der Hart, Nijenhuis & Steele 2006).
Nijenhuis et al. (2002, 2009) and Reinders (2008) suggested that studies in DID need to recognize and assess various dissociative personality states. To date, a handful of studies investigated personality state differences (Reinders et al. 2003, Reinders et al. 2006, Hermans et al. 2006, Reinders et al. 2012, Huntjens, Verschuere & McNally 2012, Schlumpf et al. 2013, Schlumpf et al. 2014). The emphasis in this thesis will be, among others, on acknowledging the differences between personality states and the importance to study those states in order to reach more clarity about psychological and neurobiological correlates of DID.
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