Terms & Definitions · Theories
Is Dissociation a Spectrum? (Continuous vs. Separate Models)
In short: researchers disagree about whether everyday “spacing out” and DID are the same thing in different amounts, or whether the dissociation in DID is a different kind of thing altogether.
What is the question?
Almost everyone dissociates a little. You drive home and don’t remember the trip. You get so lost in a book that you don’t hear someone call your name. You daydream through a meeting.
So is DID just a much stronger version of that? Or is it something different? There are two main views.
The two views
The continuous (spectrum) view
This view says dissociation is like a dial or a ruler. At one end is ordinary daydreaming. At the other end is DID. Everyone sits somewhere along the line, and the difference is how much.
A well-known questionnaire, the Dissociative Experiences Scale (DES), created by Eve Bernstein Carlson and Frank Putnam in 1986, was built on this idea. It gives a score from low to high.
The separate (discontinuous) view
This view says there are really two different things. Everyday spacing out and getting absorbed is one thing, and almost everyone has it. Trauma-based dissociation, the kind involved in DID, with amnesia and separate parts, is a different kind of experience, not just more of the same.
In 1996, researchers Niels Waller, Frank Putnam and Eve Carlson used statistics to study DES answers and reported finding a separate group, a “type,” of people whose dissociation looked different in kind, not just in amount.
Why does it matter?
- If dissociation is one spectrum, then DID may be easier to compare to everyday experiences, and some people may wrongly think “everyone has a little DID.”
- If trauma-based dissociation is separate, then a high score for daydreaming doesn’t mean someone has DID, and a low score doesn’t mean they don’t.
Many researchers today think both ideas may be partly true. The debate is still going on.
The debate and DID
For people with DID, this debate can matter when someone says, “Oh, I zone out too, everyone does that.” Many people with DID feel their experience, with lost time and separate parts, is very different from everyday daydreaming. The separate view supports that feeling.
Related terms
- Dissociation
- Time Loss
- Trance State
- Pierre Janet and Dissociation
- Theory of Structural Dissociation
A note about theories
The therapies and theories about trauma and DID are ideas that researchers are still studying and arguing about. None of them are proven facts. What works for one person may not work for another. Please take the time to read about any therapy yourself, ask questions, and decide what feels right for you.
Sources
Bernstein, E. M., & Putnam, F. W. (1986). Development, reliability, and validity of a dissociation scale. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 174(12), 727–735.
Waller, N. G., Putnam, F. W., & Carlson, E. B. (1996). Types of dissociation and dissociative types: A taxometric analysis of dissociative experiences. Psychological Methods, 1(3), 300–321.
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