RE: Evaluating Abuse Cases

["Peter M. Barach, Ph.D." <pbarach@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

	I wrote
> > The reason I am suggesting that [the DES] be included in research
> on abusing
> >parents is that there is an oft-repeated assertion that a significant
> >percentage of abusing parents may themselves be dissociative.

	Peter Dale responded:
> Peter - are these anecdotal observations or are these assertions in
> published form (if so, can you provide references?). As you know, I am
> sceptical about the Dissociation paradigm in relation to the
> N. American
> MPD/DID therapeutic industry/misadventure.

	They are anecdotal observations that have never been subjected to
empirical investigation. IMO they should be, because these assertions
about abused children and their dissociative parents have been so widely
repeated. I happen to expect that there would be a significantly higher
DES score among the parents of abused children as compared to a matched
group of controls, but a failure to discard the null hypothesis would
also be useful information.

	One very interesting recent publication concerning the complex
relationships between parenting styles, infant attachment, and
dissociation, is in the current issue of Journal of Clinical and
Consulting Psychology (I have the journal issue in my office and
unfortunately its abstract is not yet available online, so I will have
to post the reference tomorrow). The study did not find elevated DES
scores among the parents of children with disorganized attachment (an
attachment style that many believe is at the basis of dissociation);
however, the children were specifically described as NOT abused:

Peter M. Barach, Ph.D. (pbarach@sprynet.com)
Clinical Psychologist
President, International Society for the Study of Dissociation
5851 Pearl Road, Suite 305
Cleveland, OH 44130 USA
Phone:  Voice: 440-845-9011 (press 6 for voice mail)
        Fax:   440-845-9013
Opinions expressed in this post are my own and are not necessarily those
of ISSD