PSEUDO-IDENTITY and the Treatment of Personality Change in Victims of Captivity and Cults by Louis J. West, M.D.

Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, UCLA School of Medicine

Paul R. Martin, Ph.D. Director, Wellspring Retreat and Resource Center, Albany, Ohio

Excerpted with permission from [i:22798b34df]Dissociation: Clinical and Theoretical Prespectives[/i:22798b34df], ed. Stephen J. Lynn **and Judith W. Rhue, published by Guilford Publications, Inc., 1994. Prolonged environmental stress, or life situations profoundly different from the usual, can disrupt the normally integrative functions of personality. Individuals subjected to such forces may adapt through dissociation by generating an altered persona, or pseudo-identity (West, 1994).

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This article discusses a variety of dissociative/concentration problems persons may have after they have been involved in a harmful group and describes which interventions seem appear to be most helpful.

Note: Stephen J. Lynn is one of the editors of another excellent book 'Science and Pseudoscience in Clinical Psychology, Guildford Press, 2003

This book has excellent articles on New Age therapies, recovered memory, dissociative disorders, novel and controversial treatments for stress-related disorders, and commercializing mental health issues by offering therapy in the context of talk shows on television.