Dissociative Identity Disorder

Dissociative Identity Disorder

Introduction

In the years since 1980 a skyrocketing epidemic of multiple personality disorder has been reported in the literature with tens of thousands of cases. Some psychologists estimate as many as 10% of Americans suffer from the disorder. During the years since 1980 the literature swelled with articles. Before 1980 less than 200 cases were reported in the history of the world. Despite its rarity, multiple personality disorder became arguably the most publicized of mental illnesses. Since the film The Three Faces of Eve came out in 1957, more than a dozen films dealing with the disorder have been made, and information about the illness is abundantly available to the public on the Internet. With this in mind, the question that occurs is, “How has the conceptual framework of multiple personality changed in the last 50 years?” This study will attempt to answer that question by comparing two articles in contemporary literature about the subject to an article written in 1944.

Method

An article titled “Multiple Personality Disorder” written in 1944 by Taylor & Martin was located for comparison to two articles written more recently, “The Osiris Complex: Case Studies in Multiple Personality Disorder” (Ross, 2000) and “Multiple Personality Disorder: Witchcraft Survives in the Twentieth Century” (Piper, 1998). The 1944 article is frequently cited in articles written since 1980 and is considered a seminal work. Because two strands of thought regarding the disorder exist today, it was necessary to compare the old article to two contrasting concepts as articulated in the two more recent articles. The three articles were read carefully and summarized for basic themes, definitions, and differences.

Results

At the time the 1944 article “Multiple Personality Disorder” was written, there was some controversy about whether or not such cases were faked or genuine. Taylor & Martin (1944) argue that the 76 cases they review in their article are real. Multiple personality is defined as “two or more personalities each of which is so well developed and integrated as to have a relatively coordinated, rich, unified, and stable life of its own” (p. 282). The article catalogs 76 cases they found, and the authors estimate about the same number exist in literature of other countries that was unavailable to them. The authors place different cases into separate categories of meaningвЂ"alternating personality, co-conscious personality, intra-conscious personality, mutually amnesic, one-way amnesic, propriety (good behavior), quality of personality (temperament, sociability, values, etc.), responses (automatic acts, paralyses, etc.), sensibility (paresthesias, anesthesias, etc.) sex (one personality masculine, another feminine, or one heterosexual, another homosexual, etc.), and youthfulness (one personality seeming younger or more childlike than another). These categories are described in detail, coding assigned, and a table constructed categorizing each of the 76 cases found.

During the 1940s some psychologists thought the condition might be brought about by suggestion, especially by a physician using hypnosis. Some psychologists performed experiments in which they were able to produce multiple personality phenomena, and this raised the suspicion that therapists might unintentionally be producing symptoms. Taylor & Martin (1944) also acknowledge that some therapists might be looking for conflicting systems and using hypnosis or automatic writing to find them, and this could increase the likelihood of them finding several personalities. Having said this, however, Taylor & Martin believe it is possible for a person to develop amnesia, which would require the person to construct a new personality in order to function. They view multiple personality disorder as a climax of failures to integrate, “a deep and magnifying vivisectionвЂ¦Ð²Ð‚Ñœ (p. 297). Moreover, they point out that hypnotism could produce a similar effect, but no ethical psychotherapist would be as ruthless as nature is in cases of multiple personality.

Beginning about 1980, a serious epidemic of multiple personality disorder occurred amounting to tens of thousands of reported cases. A specialty developed for treatment of the disorder. In “The Osiris Complex,” Colin A. Ross (http://www.rossinst.com/osiris.htm) describes the condition as growing out of childhood abuse and psychological trauma. He defines multiple personality disorder as “a little girl imagining that the abuse is happening to someone else” (p. 2). The pain and ongoing trauma cause the child to imagine that it’s happening to someone else. This leads eventually to an out-of-body experience in which the child looks down from overhead and sees the abuse happening as though it were happening to some other child. A barrier of amnesia rises between the child herself and the new identity so that the new identity doesn’t remember the abuse or the other self. If the abuse continues, the process is reinforced, and more identities are created to deal with various aspects of the abuse. Once the process becomes habitual, new identities may be formed to deal with non-traumatic events such as going to school, playing the piano, or doing housework.

Ross states that “more than one personality” is an erroneous concept. Actually, there is only one personality, which splits into fragmented components that are personified in an abnormal way. Because of this misconception (that more than one personality can exist in the same person), the name of the disorder was changed in DSM-IV to Dissociative Identity Disorder. This was a good article to contrast with the 1944 article because Ross is a founder of the International Society for the Study of Multiple Personality and Dissociation and served two years as its president. He believes MPD to be the most important discovery in psychiatry today and the most interesting mental illness.

Another psychologist, August Piper, Jr., presents an opposing theory. In an article titled “Multiple Personality Disorder: Witchcraft Survives in