My personal experiences with dissociative disorder
I would like to briefly mention my relationship with dissociative disorder. When I became psychiatrist in 1982, dissociation has never been a part of the daily terminology among Japanese psychiatrists. DSM-III had been issued, but dissociative disorder, one of the several new diagnostic categories that emerged in DSM-III, has not yet caught attention of most Japanese psychiatrists. Hysteria, again the clinical equivalent of dissociative disorder, had never been really treated as a decent topic in academic meetings or case conferences. I was not particularly interested in dissociation or hysteria either at that time, but I was very curious about hypnosis. Perhaps it was due to some of the lectures that I attended regarding the early days of S. Freud who was at a time very eager to master and apply hypnosis to neurotic patients in Vienna.
In the summer of 1984, I went to study hypnosis under a specialist in Aizuwakamatsu , Fukushima prefecture. Dr. T, an internist who was also practicing Chinese medicine , had me stay in his clinic for several days and gave me an opportunity to observe his hypnotic practice. I saw him hypnotize some of his nursing staff and demonstrate several dramatic hypnotic suggestions. Dr.T also tried to hypnotize me, but it turned out that I was not really one of the best hypnotic subjects. In parting Dr.T advised me to continue to work on hypnosis by asking my hospital colleagues to be the subject for further practice. I did not follow through with his advice, and I stayed in the “incredulous camp” that I will discuss later.
I took real interest in dissociative disorder when I went to the US to train as psychiatrist in the late 1980s. By then in the US., clinical notion of dissociative disorder became well known among clinicians. I was under the impression that once hysteria gained a new name, i.e., dissociative disorder, it got distigmatized and acknowledged as an official clinical entity.
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