On the nature of memories: response to “A reply to Ganaway”

p. 120-12

Historical Versus Narrative Truth: Clarifying the Role of Exogenous Trauma in the Etiology of MPD and its Variants

p. 205-220The author notes a current trend toward viewing multiple personality disorder (MPD) and its variants as a form of chronic posttraumatic stress disorder based solely on exogenous childhood trauma, and cautions against prematurely reductionistic hypotheses. He focuses on Kluft's Third Etiological Factor, which includes various developmental, biological, interpersonal, sociocultural, psychodynamic shaping influences and substrates that determine the form taken by the dissociative defense. He hypothesizes a credibility continuum of childhood and contemporary memories arising primarily from exogenous trauma at one end, and endogenous trauma (stemming from intrapsychic adaptational needs) at the other. The author offers alternative multidetermined explanations for certain unverified trauma memories that currently are being accepted and validated as factual experiences by many therapists. He describes some potentially deleterious effects of validating unverified trauma memories during psychotherapy, and recommends that the MPD patients' need for unconditional credibility be responded to in the same manner as other transference-generated productions