Adaptive and Maladaptive Dissociation: An Epidemiological and Anthropological Comparison and Proposition for an Expanded Dissociation Model

Dissociation is the psychological aspect of stress response. It is an adaptive reaction to a stressor on a short-term basis but can be maladaptive if underor overutilized and comprises the partitioning of consciousness, ranging from barely to rigidly partitioned. Current means of measuring dissociation focus primarily on DSM-IV-TR Dissociative Disorders and do not sufficiently account for adaptive sub-clinical forms or maladaptive under-dissociating. These measures of pathology are not useful for determining how well-adapted a population is to stress— i.e., how well dissociation is generally put to use. The purpose of this paper is: (1) to analyze the general population and university student studies that have been conducted using current epidemiological methods of assessing dissociation in sub-clinical populations; and (2) to compare and contrast anthropological and epidemiological models of dissociation. An alternative method for assessing dissociation that synthesizes these two views is proposed. keywords : adaptation, dissociation, dissociative disorders, stress response, well-being