Function-Attitude Profiles of Self-States: A Developmental-Structural Framework Proposal Linking Jungian Typology and Dissociative Compartmentalization

Dissociative identity disorder (DID) is characterized by self-states that differ in memory, affect, and behavioral repertoire. Clinicians have long noted that these states may also differ in cognitive style, yet the field lacks a descriptive vocabulary for such differences and a developmental account of why some states become compartmentalized while others do not. This article proposes a developmental-structural framework. It uses Jung's eight function-attitudes—extraverted and introverted thinking, feeling, sensation, and intuition—as dimensional descriptors of self-states rather than as personality types, and it explicitly rejects Myers-Briggs type categories. Four propositions follow. Self-states can be distinguished by function-attitude profiles that are stable within a state and variable across states; differentiation of these profiles is continuous with normative within-person variability; early, chronic, caregiver-related trauma predicts compartmentalization with amnesia-like boundaries, whereas later or single-incident trauma predicts intrusive re-experiencing without identity fragmentation; and the boundary of pathology is carried by meta-awareness, memory continuity, and impairment rather than by the number or typology of states. The framework yields a double dissociation—developmental compartmentalization should raise between-state differentiation, whereas acquired degeneration should lower it—and specifies three observations that could refute it. It is offered as a framework proposal, not an empirical test, and is intended to generate studies that can fail.