Characteristics of patients with multiple personality and dissociative disorders on psychological testing

We describe a new psychological testing procedure used on a consecutive series of 14 patients with multiple personality and dissociative disorders who met DSM-III-R and research criteria for dissociative disorders. Once dissociative phenomena were accounted for in testing, most patients displayed response patterns markedly different from those of schizophrenic and borderline patients. Patients showed striking variability on cognitive and projective tests, often related to posttraumatic intrusions. Rorschach protocols showed unusual thinking accompanied by psychological complexity and highly developed self-observing capacity. In contrast to classical conceptualizations about these patients, most subjects had personality profiles that were intellectualized, obsessive, and introversive, not histrionic or labile.