Hi all-

Keri and I have been working on a paper and presentation for our
stimulus control class. The paper is on Dissociative Identity
Disorder and it's our attempt at describing the disorder in
behavioral terms and more specifically, in terms of stimulus
control. We have been using the chapter on the self from the FAP
book, along with several other articles that discuss private and
public control of the self. A lot of our references seem to be at
odds with each other.

We were hoping to get some input on how you all view DID in terms of
public and private control. More specifically, is DID inaccurate or
excessive private control, inaccurate or excessive public control, or
maybe both? We are primarily considering private and public control
in terms of how the disorder develops. For example, if abusive
environments are unpredictable, the child relies more on private
control because public control is not helpful. However, adults with
DID are often talked about as having excessive public control, e.g.,
relying on therapist reactions for as cues for how to behave.

This is a long email and somewhat tangential to FAP, but hopefully
it's interesting enough that you'll want to respond. :) We give our
presentation Tuesday (we didn't realize until today that we were
confused!), but have until next week to flesh it all out for the
paper.

Thanks!
Sara and Keri