Autobiographical memory across personalities in dissociative identity disorder: a case report

A core feature of dissociative identity disorder (DID) is the amnesia that exists between personalities. This study investigated autobiographical memory in a patient, HS, prior to and after her diagnosis with DID. This diagnosis was associated with increased recall of traumatic memories that were reported by a child personality. The child personality was able to recognize only half of the memories reported by the host personality. HS's responses were dissimilar to responses of control and nonexperiment participants. These findings suggest that DID is associated with alterations in autobiographical memory and that memories differ across personalities. Results are discussed in terms of memory and pseudomemory development in DID.