I forgot why I did this. It has been sitting in my drafts for a while. I think it was originally to prove a point about how much you limit yourself if you exclude controversial researchers from your reading. I don’t feel like making an argument about it anymore, but I still wanna share Colin Ross's three most influential contributions to MPD/DID research:
Colin Ross was a key developer of The Dissociative Disorders Interview Schedule (DDIS). This is a huge one because MPD/DID research had a major problem with inconsistent diagnosis. The DDIS gave researchers a standardized way to assess DID/MPD and related dissociative conditions. Very cool.
Ross, C A et al. “Structured interview data on 102 cases of multiple personality disorder from four centers.” The American journal of psychiatry vol. 147,5 (1990): 596-601. doi:10.1176/ajp.147.5.596. This was a big deal because MPD was often criticized as anecdotal, therapist-created, or based on weird case reports. To combat this, Colin Ross and his colleagues provided 102 systematically assessed patients from four different clinical centers/sites.
Colin Ross's book, Multiple Personality Disorder: Diagnosis, Clinical Features, and Treatment, published in 1989, is probably his most influential clinical publication. This book helped shape how clinicians conceptualized MPD in the late 80s/90s. Pretty foundational, and highly referenced in older stuff from around the same era.
He was among the early modern high-output clinician-researchers who aggressively argued DID is real and diagnosable. I have immense respect for that. Eye lasers be damned (which I don't think is that big of a deal to begin with since I experience psychotic-like symptoms, so I'm cautious about treating unusual beliefs as automatically disqualifying). Colin Ross's later controversial beliefs are separate from evaluating his earlier contributions to DID research.
Here is a list of other things I like that cite Colin Ross as a source:
Dorahy, Martin J et al. “Auditory hallucinations in dissociative identity disorder and schizophrenia with and without a childhood trauma history: similarities and differences.” The Journal of nervous and mental disease vol. 197,12 (2009): 892-8. doi:10.1097/NMD.0b013e3181c299ea. Found that voice-hearing in DID often started earlier, involved more than two voices, included child and adult voices, and had more tactile/visual hallucinations than schizophrenia groups. Very important if you're trying to understand "voices" without automatically calling them schizophrenia.
Longden, Eleanor et al. “The Relationship Between Dissociation and Symptoms of Psychosis: A Meta-analysis.” Schizophrenia bulletin vol. 46,5 (2020): 1104-1113. doi:10.1093/schbul/sbaa037. Found a strong association between dissociation and psychotic experiences, particularly hallucination-like experiences. Neato.
Renard, Selwyn B et al. “Unique and Overlapping Symptoms in Schizophrenia Spectrum and Dissociative Disorders in Relation to Models of Psychopathology: A Systematic Review.” Schizophrenia bulletin vol. 43,1 (2017): 108-121. doi:10.1093/schbul/sbw063. Directly compares schizophrenia-spectrum disorders and dissociative disorders, looking at where symptoms overlap and where they differ. Very good for differential diagnosis.