Identity revised: a clinician's perspective on what an identity-based model of mind looks like

Abstract

Identity has been a relatively underreferenced concept in psychiaty and clinical psychopathology. It is of particular interest that the few diagnostic categories associated with some type of identity disturbance are related to chronic psychological traumatization in childhood such as abuse an/or neglect or deficiencies in secure interpersonal attachment. As developmental traumatization is usually associated with dissociation regardless the prevailing diagnostic pattern, models of mind considering the relationships between childhood adversities, dissociation, and identity are compelling not only for social scientists but also for clinicians who are exposed to Dissociative Identity Disorder (aka Multiple Personality Disorder), Borderline Personality Disorder, and Complex PTSD as conditions responding to psychotherapy rather than speficic drug regimens. This chapter is concerned with the Theory of “Functional Dissociation of Self” (Şar and Öztürk, 2007) which proposes such a model of mind. As newly introduced concepts, “Sociological Self” and “Trauma-Self” (Symptomatic Self) are presented as elements of this model which have direct implications about disturbances of identity and psychotherapeutic interventions taylored to address them.