SOMATOFORM DISSOCIATIVE SYMPTOMS AS RELATED TO ANIMAL DEFENSIVE REACTIONS TO PREDATORY IMMINENCE AND INJURY

The authors hypothesized that there would be a similarity between anim al defensive responses to variable predatory imminence and injury and certain somatoform dissociative symptoms of trauma-reporting patients who have dissociative disorder. As a first test of this hypothesis, 12 somatoform symptom clusters consisting of clinically observed somatof orm dissociative phenomena were constructed. All clusters discriminate d between patients with dissociative disorders (n = 50) and patients w ith other psychiatric diagnoses (n = 50). Those expressive of the hypo thesized similarity-freezing, anesthesia-analgesia, and disturbed eati ng-belonged to the 5 most characteristic symptoms of dissociative diso rder patients. Anesthesia-analgesia, urogenital pain, and freezing sym ptom clusters independently contributed to predicted presence of disso ciative disorder. Using an independent sample, it appeared that anesth esia-analgesia best predicted presence of dissociative disorder after controlling for symptom severity. The results were largely consistent with the hypothesized similarity.