The Psychobiological Functions of Dissociation

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Abstract
Dissociation represents the fundamental psychobiological mechanism underlying a wide variety of altered forms of consciousness, including conversion hysteria, hypnotic trance, mediumistic trance, multiple personality, fugue states, spirit possession states and highway hypnosis. This mechanism has great individual and species survival value. Under certain conditions, it serves to facilitate seven major functions: (1) the automatization of certain behaviors, (2) the efficiency and economy of effort, (3) the resolution of irreconcilable conflicts, (4) escape from the constraints of reality, (5) the isolation of catastrophic experiences, (6) the cathartic discharge of certain feelings, and (7) the enhancement of herd sense (e.g., the submersion of the individual ego for the group identity, greater suggestibility, etc.). To illustrate how all these functions operate, the author describes a personal dissociative episode during which, literally, the right hand did not know what the left hand was doing. Supportive clinical and research findings from studies in hypnosis, multiple personality, spirit possession, blackouts and conversion hysteria are also presented.

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