Transcript Somatoform Disorders and Dissociative Disorders

Somatoform Disorders and
Dissociative Disorders
 Ellen becomes dizzy & nauseated in the late
afternoon- shortly before she expects her
husband home. Neither her primary care
physician nor the neurologist he sent her to could
identify a physical cause. They suspect her
symptoms have an unconscious psychological
origin, possibly triggered by her mixed feelings
about her husband.
Somatoform Disorders
 Somatoform Disorders: psychological disorder in
which the symptoms take a somatic (bodily) form
without apparent physical causes
 Culture has a big effect on people’s physical
complaints
 Psychological explanations of anxiety and
depression are socially less acceptable in China
than in Western Culture
 Chinese appear more willing to report physical
symptoms of their distress
 Bodily complaints have often been observed in African
cultures as well.
 One type of somatoform disorder is conversion disorder
 A rare somatoform disorder in which a person experiences
very specific genuine physical symptoms for which no
physiological basis can be found
 Anxiety is converted into a physical symptom
 Hypochondriasis is another form of somatoform
disorders
 A person interprets normal physical sensations as symptoms of
a disease
 Typically the person will go through many doctors before one
will diagnosis them
 Many times the person, and doctors, fail to treat the
psychological roots of the disorder and only treat the
physical complaints
Dissociative Disorders
 Dissociative Disorders: disorders in which
conscious awareness becomes separated
(dissociated) from previous memories, thoughts,
and feelings
 Dissociation itself is not so rare
 Many people may have a sense of being unreal,
of being separated from their body
 Example of this is when you drive somewhere
without consciously knowing that you were driving
Dissociative Identity Disorder
 A rare dissociative disorder in which a person
exhibits two or more distinct personalities.
 Used to be called multiple personality disorder
 Each personality has its own identity
 Understanding Dissociative Identity Disorder
 Nicholas Spanos asked college students to
pretend they were accused murders being
examined by a psychiatrist
 Under hypnosis most spontaneously expressed a
second personality
 Skeptics also find it suspicious that the disorder
is so localized in time and space
 Between 1930 and 1960 only 2 cases per decade
were diagnosis
 In 1980 when the DSM contained the first formal
code the number shot up to 20,000
 Outside of North America disorder is much less
prevalent
o In India and Japan it is practically nonexistent
 Is this a cultural phenomenon?
 Skeptics feel some practitioners that use hypnosis
go fishing for personalities
 Other psychologists disagree finding support of DID
 Handedness switches from personality to personality
 Visual acuity and eye muscle balance changes
 Both psychoanalysis and learning perspectives agree
that this is a way of handling anxiety
 Psychoanalysis see this as a defense against the
anxiety cause by the eruption of unacceptable
impulses
 Learning view this as behavior reinforced by
anxiety reduction
 Some place dissociative disorders under posttraumatic disorders because of their natural
protective responses
There’s Something About Eve
 Chris Sizemore’s story gave visibility to DID