A relationship between dissociative experiences and the eating disorders has been reported. However the nature of that link is not clearly understood. This study investigates the links between dissociation (as measured by the Dissociative Experiences Scale -DES II) and eating psychopathology in a clinical group of bulimic women and a nonclinical group of undergraduates. In the nonclinical group, specific dissociative styles were found to be linked with bulimic attitudes on the Eating Attitudes Test. In the eating-disordered group, there was an association between the scales of the DES II and frequency of binging. This association was primarily due to the effects of the dissociative style of absorption (e.g., daydreaming). Suggestions are made for further research, and the clinical implications of the findings are discussed. 0 1995 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Although bulimic characteristics are well documented, there is still only relatively poor understanding of the reasons for those behaviors. It is important to determine the function of these symptoms (e.g., Slade, 1982;Lacey, 1986) in order to target treatments to reduce them. Over recent years, it has been suggested that bulimic behaviorsparticularly binging and vomiting-may serve a defensive purpose, reducing awareness of intolerable emotional and cognitive states. This mechanism is often referred to as dissociation. Dissociation is a relatively primitive defense mechanism, which incorporates a variety of means of reducing awareness (such as derealization, depersonalization, ignoring pain, auditory hallucinations, and memory loss). Everybody will use this defense mechanism to some extent. However, in its more severe forms it is associated with diagnoses such as multiple personality disorder (Bernstein & Putnam, 1986) and posttraumatic stress disorder (Spiegel, Hunt, & Donnershine, 1988).