Let's talk about longitudinal studies on dissociation!
First off, what is a longitudinal study? This is a type of academic experiment where researchers study the same group of volunteers over a long period of time, usually several years. It's very effective for seeing how the same things change over time, such as how people might develop dissociative disorders.
The longitudinal study I want to share is "Development and the fragmented self: longitudinal study of dissociative symptomatology in a nonclinical sample" by researchers Ogawa, Sroufe, Weinfield, Carlson, and Egeland. This was a longitudinal study over the span of 19 years, looking to investigate the emergence of pathological dissociation in a person.
Experiencing dissociation is normal to some extent! But pathological dissociation is described as severe & abnormal dissociation such as amnesia, identity confusion, identity fragmentation, and depersonalization & derealization.
Okay, now let's talk about the study. The study followed 168 children from birth to 19 years old. They were in "at-risk" families which experienced things like poverty or a teenage parent. Here's what the study discovered after 19 years:
Trauma is necessary but not sufficient for pathological dissociation. Not every child who experienced trauma ended up dissociative. Every child who did develop pathological dissociation, however, experienced trauma.
Pathological dissociation is predicted by trauma occurring at 0-24 months of age. The older the children got, the less likely pathological dissociation was to develop.
Pathological dissociation is also predicted by trauma that is severe and chronic.
Pathological dissociation is predicted by attachment style. Children with disorganized attachment to their mothers had the highest dissociation scores. Children who had anxious/avoidant attachment with their mothers had higher dissociation scores than children with secure or anxious/ambivalent attachment.
The more integrated a child's sense of self is, the less likely they will develop pathological dissociation.
The environments that produced the most severe trauma also produced the most chronic trauma, while environments that produced the least severe trauma also produced the least chronic trauma. Likewise, the children who experienced the most severe & chronic traumas also experienced them at the earliest ages. "If children are living in chaotic, traumatic environments when they are infants, then it is likely that they will continue to live in such environments as they grow older. All three of these aspects of trauma may be highly related in our society, and are probably not separable in either an analytic sense or a theoretical sense."
Their findings support that pathological dissociation is not a more severe version of normal dissociation. Pathological dissociation actually "represents an extreme deviation from normal development."
