Sociological Review
Опубликовано на портале: 22-03-2007
Susie Scott
Sociological Review.
1999.
Vol. 47.
No. 3.
P. 432-460.
Sociological responses to the increase in recent years of psychiatric reports of
multiple personality (latterly redefined as Dissociative Identity Disorder) have
focused upon its discursive production as a diagnostic category. Drawing on life-history
interviews with survivors of extreme childhood abuse - some of whom defined themselves
as having 'multiple personalities' - this paper suggests that an adequate sociological
account needs to combine analysis of the popular and clinical discourses of dissociation/multiplicity,
with an understanding of the relationship between these and particular individual
auto/biographies. The production of a narrative of fragmented subjectivity is considered
as an active engagement with previously denied and silenced autobiographical experience
and with the dominant contemporary discourse that allows for the episodic denial
of self-reflexive selfhood. In the light of DID diagnoses being largely applied to/adopted
by women, questions are raised concerning the possible impact of the adoption of
a multiple identity on individual integrity and autonomy.
