Harvard’s Psychology textbook (post 4) does not mean that all psychologists are uninformed about dissociation and dissociative disorders

As discussed in my three prior posts, the editors of Harvard’s Psychology textbook (1) do not recognize signs of multiple personality, distort the meaning of prevalence statistics, and hide the fact that Harvard’s greatest psychologist, William James, endorsed the validity of multiple personality.

If Harvard’s psychology textbook is representative of what is being taught in most colleges, then college psychology students are being given propaganda against dissociation and the dissociative disorders.

However, I don’t want anyone to mistake this as a psychiatry vs. psychology issue. Most psychiatrists are just as uninformed about multiple personality. In a past post, I explained why the mental status examination taught in most psychiatric residency training programs almost guarantees that a clinician will miss the diagnosis. No, this is not a psychiatrist vs. psychologist issue at all.

The fact is, many of the leading experts on dissociation are psychologists. Indeed, most of the contributors to one of the best books are psychologists (2).

1. Daniel L. Schacter, Daniel T. Gilbert, Daniel M. Wegner. Psychology, Second Edition. New York, Worth Publishers, 2011.

2. Paul F. Dell, John A. O’Neil (Editors). Dissociation and the Dissociative Disorders: DSM-V and Beyond. New York, Routledge, 2009.