Abstract

FUNCTIONAL DISSOCIATION, A CLINICAL SYNTHESIS OF DID AND PIERRE JANET'S PSYCHASTENIA

DID has its origins in the pioneering work of the physician and psychologist Pierre Janet (1859-1947), who put forward the notion of "dissociation of ideas and functions". This new concept was reworked a century later by O. van der Hart and his colleagues, who proposed the notion of "structural dissociation of personality" between at least two fragments with a sense of self: the ANP and the EP. Functional dissociation of personality is a new concept that we would like to introduce here, at the interface of DID and structural dissociation. This new diagnostic category provides very useful clinical details in psychotherapy practice because its prevalence is significant. Functional dissociation allows the clinician to produce a differential diagnosis with DID, which paves the way for a more appropriate treatment than DID for patients without structural dissociation of the personality.

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