Childhood Sexual, Emotional, and Physical Abuse as Predictors of Dissociation in Adulthood

ABSTRACT

This Australian study explores a person’s self-reported exposure to childhood abuse to identify the characteristics that are predictive of clinical levels of dissociation in adulthood. The final sample comprised 303 participants, including 26 inpatients and outpatients (24 females and two males) receiving treatment for a dissociative disorder (DD), and 277 university participants, including 220 controls (186 females, 34 males), 31 with elevated levels of dissociation consistent with a DD or posttraumatic stress disorder (27 females and four males), and 26 with clinical levels of dissociation (20 females and six males). The findings demonstrate clinical levels of dissociation and DDs occur in individuals reporting a history of childhood abuse, particularly sexual abuse and experiences that are potentially life-threatening to a child, such as choking, smothering, and physical injury that breaks bones or teeth, or that compromise the child’s survival needs, including threats of abandonment and deprivation of basic needs. Females who disclosed being sexual abused in addition to being choked or smothered had a 106-fold risk of clinical levels of dissociation. As expected, self-reported amnesia was prevalent in the dissociative groups. Yet, even in the control group, one-third of those disclosing sexual abuse reported an unclear memory of it. Strong similarities in abuse experiences were found between the clinical sample and those in the university sample with clinical levels of dissociation (which is unlikely to have previously been diagnosed). The dissociative groups reported higher rates of corroboration of their abusive experiences. The findings support the traumatic etiology of dissociation.

KEYWORDS:

• sexual abuse
• childhood trauma
• dissociation
• memory

Data availability statement

Due to the nature of this research, participants did not agree for their data to be shared publicly. The dataset is retained at Research University of New England (RUNE). Conditions of use are outlined at: https://rune.une.edu.au/web/handle/1959.11/23013.

Notes

¹ The 16 respondents who answered “I have only partial memory for the sexual experiences, but I think I used to remember it much better” were removed from this analysis. Although this could technically be classed as a partial memory of abuse and “remembered much better” does not imply the memory was ever clear, this could be consistent with normal or motivated forgetting.

² The clinical sample could not be included in this analysis as the survey completed by these participants did not contain all sexual abuse types (those with graphic descriptions were removed).

³ The analysis also included females scoring between 15 and 20 on the MID-60.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by Department of Education and Training (Australia). The funding was an Australian Postgraduate Award, i.e. a PhD scholarship administered by the Federal Department of Education and Training.

Notes on contributors

Mary-Anne Kate

Mary-Anne Kate is an award-winning postdoctoral researcher specializing in interpersonal trauma, attachment, and post-traumatic disorders. She is currently the Lecturer Practitioner for the Master of Professional Psychology program at Southern Cross University and holds an adjunct research position at the University of New England.

Graham Jamieson

Graham Jamieson is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Psychology at the University of New England. He specializes in cognitive-affective-neuroscience of executive control, affective self-regulation, dissociation, hypnosis, meditation, and trance states and has published extensively on these topics.

Warwick Middleton

Warwick Middleton is one of the world's leading experts in trauma and dissociation. He holds appointments as Adjunct Professor, School of Public Health, La Trobe University, School of Behavioral, Cognitive & Social Sciences, University of New England, Department of Psychology, University of Canterbury and, Associate Professor in Psychiatry, University of Queensland.