#9: Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)

Dissociative identity disorder or what was once known as multiple personality disorder is characterized by an individual who emanates multiple different identities, each with its own pattern of thought and way of interacting with the patient’s environment.  To be classified as having this disorder, an individual needs to have at least two personalities that alternate taking control of the person’s body according to the DSM-IV.  The person being afflicted by the disorder typically experiences memory loss that goes beyond regular forgetfulness, but rather whole memories of their past are suppressed.  Patients typically experience comorbidity with other diseases such as depression.

In the past, people who had multiple personalities typically were considered to be possessed, but one of the first real documentations was found from 19^th century when psychiatrists tried hypnosis on their patients and found that different “personalities” emerged during hypnosis that were not present regularly.  In 1893, one particular case of Louis Vive was documented of how the boy was attacked by a viper and experienced different “split selves” and was the basis of many papers of that time.  One of the first individuals actually diagnosed with the disorder and treated scientifically was Clara Norton Fowler by neurologist Morton Prince between 1898 and 1904.  However, often times patients are misdiagnosed with this disorder when in fact they have schizophrenia as legitimate documentation of this disorder has waned in modern years.  However, public interest in this disorder has led to many famous books and movies.  In many ways, people are fascinated with the idea that an individual can bottle themselves into separate vessels of information in order to create a false utopia in which the individual does not have to deal with the traumatic event that most likely cause the disorder to come about.  By suppressing these bad memories, individuals resort to personalities to best help them relieve the pain caused from these traumatic events making their worlds an image of perfection where their pain does not exist and, in most cases, neither does their memories from their split personalities.

As mentioned previously, due to the public interest in this fascinating disorder, movies and television programs have been created to further delve into what it is like for a patient experiencing DID.  The following clip is a promotional trailer for a modern program that follows the life of a patient diagnosed with DID with a more comical perspective.  As can be seen briefly from the trailer, DID can be a serious disorder that can quite literally separate a person into fractions of a perfect person as each individual in the clip represents a part of the principle character Tara's desire to be complete.  One character represents Tara's desire to be a perfect mother, one character represents Tara's desire to be a perfect rebel to society or free spirit, and another character represents Tara's desire to be a perfect leader.  While one might question how Tara could ever possibly want to be man, it is my interpretation that it is not her desire to be the opposite sex rather it is her wanting to be in complete control of herself and her surroundings.  This characteristic fo being controlling is something that the character known as 'Buck' has that Tara, as well as other DID patients, want in their lives as they want to be integrated into one complete human being as opposed to mirror images of an incomplete vessel.
 

Works Cited:

Borch-Jacobsen M, Brick D (2000). "How to predict the past: from trauma to repression". History of Psychiatry

Spitzer, Robert L. DSM-IV-TR Casebook: a Learning Companion to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Text Revision. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Pub., 2002. Print.

Van der Kolk BA, Van der Hart O (December 1989). "Pierre Janet and the breakdown of adaptation in psychological trauma" Am J Psychiatry 146 (12): 1530–40