DISSOCIATIVE IDENTITY DISORDER

Dissociative Identity Disorder

Dissociative Identity Disorder

Introduction

Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), also known today as Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD), is psychiatric disorder where two or more personalities seem inhabit a single body. The different personalities are referred to as "alters". At different times, the personalities alternate in their control of the person's actions and general conduct. Dissociation is a mental process, which produces a lack of connection in a person's thoughts, feelings, actions, or sense of identity. During the time that a person is dissociating, certain information is not associated with other information as it would normally be. The main topic of the essay is Dissociative Identity Disorder but it will also compare with Schizophrenia.

Discussion

During a traumatic experience, a person may dissociate the memory and circumstances of the trauma from his ongoing memory and create another personality as a means temporary mental escape from the fear and pain of the trauma (Benner & Joscelyne 2004), resulting in a "blackout" in memory as to what took place while they were dissociating. In many instances Multiples,( as people with MPD are known), may experience a total loss of memory in regard to what took place when they were experiencing domination of one of their other "alter" personalities (Benner & Joscelyne 2004).

The majority of MPD cases have been known to develop among individuals who have documented histories of repetitive, overwhelming, and often life threatening trauma at a sensitive developmental stage of childhood. The most common forms of trauma in this day and age consist of extreme physical, emotional, and sexual abuse in childhood (Lilienfield, 2008). In people with MPD, dissociation is used as a means of defense where there is no possible physical escape. By doing so, their thoughts, feelings, and perceptions of traumatic experiences are separated from them psychologically, allowing them to function as if the trauma had not occurred (Coons 2002).

Dissociative Disorders are often referred to as a highly creative survival technique, because they allow individuals to endure what seems to be a "hopeless" circumstance and preserve some areas of healthy functioning (Benner & Joscelyne 2004). Over time, for a child who has been repeatedly physically and sexually assaulted, defensive dissociation becomes reinforced and conditioned. Because the Dissociative escape is so effective, children who are very practiced at it may automatically use it whenever they feel threatened or anxious, even if the anxiety producing situation is neither extreme nor abusive (Coons 2002).

Often, even after the traumatic circumstances are long past, the left-over pattern of defensive dissociation remains. The result of this repeated dissociation is a series of separate entities, or mental states (Benner & Joscelyne 2004), which may eventually take on identities of their own. These entities may become the internal "personality states" of a DID system. Changing between these states of consciousness is often described as "switching" (Lilienfield, 2008).

Those with MPD have a dominant personality or "host" personality, and the alter personalities fracture off that core personality and form their own ...