Playing for Time: Temporizing Techniques in the Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder

Abstract

The treatment of multiple personality disorder (MPD) is often a prolonged and grueling enterprise, which imposes taxing demands upon the therapist and the patient alike. It becomes quite important to pace the therapy, lest the already beleaguered patient become both acutely and chronically overwhelmed. The majority of the extant literature on the use of hypnosis for the treatment of MPD addresses the processes of accessing the alters, abreacting traumata, arranging reconciliations among the alters, and facilitating integration. This communication discusses the necessity of titrating the amount of discomfort the patient must endure against the patient's resources and capacity to achieve mastery and self-efficacy. Several hypnotherapeutic techniques for offering respite and temporary asylum are explained and illustrated: alter substitution, the provision of sanctuary, distancing maneuvers, bypassing time, bypassing affect and/or memory, attenuating affect and/or memory retrieval, and rearranging the configuration of the alters by bartering or “shuffling the deck.”