Multiple personality and related dissociative phenomena in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy

Abstract

Many patients with temporal lobe epilepsy also experience dissociative episodes. Three patients with multiple personality exhibited alterations in speech pattern, personality, handedness, and sense of personal identity and claimed amnesia for the dissociative episodes. Another 10 patients identified alternative personalities or demons as motivators of ego-alien behavior. Of clinic patients with temporal lobe epilepsy, 33% exhibited some dissociative phenomena, which had no apparent association with individual seizures but always followed the development of the seizure disorder. The authors propose that intensified, dystonic affects, characteristic of the interictal period in temporal lobe epilepsy, may predispose some individuals to dissociative reactions.