Winner of ISSTD's 2009 Pierre Janet Writing Award for the best publication on dissociation in 2009! Dissociation and the Dissociative Disorders is a book that has no real predecessor in the dissociative disorders field. It reports the most recent scientific findings and conceptualizations about dissociation; defines and establishes the boundaries of current knowledge in the dissociative disorders field; identifies and carefully articulates the field’s current points of confusion, gaps in knowledge, and conjectures; clarifies the different aspects and implications of dissociation; and sets forth a research agenda for the next decade. In many respects, Dissociation and the Dissociative Disorders both defines and redefines the field.

This second edition of the award-winning original text brings together in one volume the current thinking and conceptualizations on dissociation and the dissociative disorders. Comprised of ten parts, starting with historical and conceptual issues, and ending with considerations for the present and future, internationally renowned authors in the trauma and dissociation fields explore different facets of dissociation in pathological and non-clinical guises. This book is designed to be the most comprehensive reference book in the dissociation field and aims to provide a scholarly foundation for understanding dissociation, dissociative disorders, current issues and perspectives within the field, theoretical formulations, and empirical findings. Chapters have been thoroughly updated to include recent developments in the field, including: the complex nature of conceptualization, etiology, and neurobiology; the various manifestations of dissociation in clinical and non-clinical forms; and different perspectives on how dissociation should be understood. This book is essential for clinicians, researchers, theoreticians, students of clinical psychology psychiatry, and psychotherapy, and those with an interest or curiosity in dissociation in the various ways it can be conceived and studied.