Dissociative Identity Disorder

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Dissociative Identity Disorder

• Multiple Personalities

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Dissociative Disorders

• Major losses in memory and identity due to
  psychological factors
• NOT due to brain damage or injury
• IS a psychological process, a protection of sorts

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A closer look at Disassociation

• Do you ever block things out of your mind because
  you dont want to think about them?
• Compartmentalizing
• Healthy, normal, necessary
• Under circumstances of substantial trauma
• Mind may block out memory entirely dissociative
  amnesia
• Mind may alter experience dissociative
  blindness
• Mind may block identity dissociative identity

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Types of Dissociation

• Amnesia
• Localized May forget all or part of a specific
  event
• Systematized May forget everything a specific
  place or a specific person
• Fugue May forget who they are entirely and go on
  a journey becoming a new person
• Conversion
• Loss of a body function after a trauma
• Blindness
• Paralysis

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Types of Dissociation more

• Identity Disorder
• Different distinct personality states control the
  persons body at different times
• Literary example Dr. Jekyll Mr. Hyde
• May be as few as 2 or as many as 100 different
  personalities

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Why does dissociation occur?

• One part of the mind wants to protect another
  part
• Memory is blocked, boxed up to protect ego
• Why
• A trauma occurs the ego is unable to handle
• Where do the memories go?
• Into the unconscious
• Remember Freuds concept of repression?

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Another look at Repression

• Trauma is tucked into unconscious
• Repression
• NOT under voluntary control
• You cant choose to repress
• Wont know if you have done it
• We all do this, small scale
• DID- massive scale

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Other peculiarities of memory

• Absentmindedness where did I put my keys
• Déjà vu something new seems familiar
• Jamais vu forget something familiar
• Prenatal memory
• Memory under anesthesia
• Subliminal memory

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Importance of Memory

• Think about your life if you had no memories
• Feature of consciousness that
• gives us our ties to our past
• Gives us our identity
• Gives us our connections to others place
• Without memory wed always be starting over

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D. Identity Disorder

• Two or more separate personalities
• Usually one is central guides interactions
• Called the host
• Other personalities are called alters
• Average for females is 10
• Average for males is 8
• Chris Sizemore Three Faces of Eve
• Had 20

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Characteristics

• Transitions from one identity to another are
  often triggered by stress.
• Frequent gaps are found in memories of personal
  history for both the distant and recent past.
• Symptoms of depression or anxiety are present.
• Self-mutilation and suicidal and/or aggressive
  behavior may take place.
• The average time that elapses from the first
  symptom to diagnosis is six to seven years

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How Common is DID

• Very uncommon
• 1 have the disorder
• 4 times as many women
• 97 had severe, ongoing abuse typically before
  age 5
• Protective subpersonalities (alters) develop to
  deal with the abuses to the host

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A quote

• These children have often been kept in such
  extraordinary terrifying and confusing
  circumstances that I am more amazed that they
  survive psychologically at all than I am that
  they manage to preserve themselves by a desperate
  redrawing of their boundaries. What they do, when
  confronted with overwhelming conflict and pain,
  is this They "leave." They create a boundary so
  that the horror doesn't happen to them it either
  happens to no one, or to some other self, better
  able to sustain its organization under such an
  onslaught--at least that's what they say they
  did, as best they recall.

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Subpersonalities

• May be active take charge of body
• May be observing quiet observers
• May know of/ interact with each other or not
• Mutually amnestic
• None know about the others
• Mutually cognizant
• All know about the others
• One-way amnestic
• one knows of another but not the reverse
• Most common situation

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More on Subpersonalities

• May like or dislike each other
• Each personality
• Has vital statistics
• own name, gender, race, physical appearance,
  sexual orientation, age
• Has abilities
• Language, driving, talents
• differs physiologically
• Blood pressure
• Responses to medication, including allergies
• Handwriting samples
• EEG responses
• Brain scan studies have confirmedchanges in
  personalities

They differ physically yet reside in the Same
body.
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• Handwriting
• Samples of
• Subpersonalities
• Different enough that handwriting experts
  believethe samples are made byseparate people

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Often called Schizophreniawhy?

• Misinformed public
• The two disorders are profoundly different
• Schizophrenics lose touch with the rational
  plane of reality enter impossible worlds
• DID are always in the rational world, but as
  different people

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History Controversy on DID

• Rarely diagnosed prior to 1973 when the book
  Sybil was published
• Many people did not believe the disorder existed
  as cases began to emerge after the book
• Believed it was created or faked
• Diagnosis of Multiple Personality Disorder
  established in 1980
• Changed in 1994 to Dissociative Identity Disorder

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Treatment

• Develop trusting relationship
• Work with several different clients
• Educate them about disorder
• Slowly re-integrate experiences
• Difficult work
• subpersonalities may work against the process
• May become self-destructive with memories
• Merge personalities
• Host must own all behavior, emotion, knowledge
• Alters may see this as death and resist
• Support coping to prevent later dissociations