Dissociative Identity Disorder

Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) is a neurological disorder wherein a person’s self-states are not conformed to a single identity, usually due to emotional or physical abuse, and thus a single unified personality is never achieved and the different dissociated states of consciousness take over the body and mind consistently. Simply put, the individual has multiple identities, known as alters, that consistently take over the mind in different situations. DID used to be called Multiple Personality Disorder, but this name is misleading because the individual does not have “multiple personalities” – their identity has just not conformed into one, so they have multiple identities that have different personalities. As previously mentioned, DID …show more content…
The patient must have loss of memory that cannot be explained by seizures, drugs, or anything else. This loss of memory is a result of the alters switching consciousness. For example, the patient, under the control of one alter, could go to the store to buy something, and suddenly switch to another alter, who would not know where they are or why they are there. Other symptoms include identity confusion, depersonalization, and the inability to recall personal information. The individual with DID switches identities without conscious control. When encountering a new situation, the identity that has developed to take on that situation takes over the body, which is how this disorder simultaneously helps and hurts the person. It helps because in dangerous situations a stronger, more emotionally distant alter can take over, but it hurts because the information of what happens in some situations isn’t always passed from alter to alter, which can cause confusion and fear. It is hard to explain how the alter system works because it is so complicated and it is not fully understood. It is understood that there is no “original” personality or alter, because each alter is one strand of a dissociated personality. However, there may be one alter that seems to be the “owner,” and is the personality that was originally abused. The alter that is currently present is referred to as the “host” alter, and, generally speaking, each alter has a job or a role. Some alters may know about the abuse that occurred that caused the dissociation, while others may not. This carries into the treatment of DID. There is no real cure for DID, but the best treatment is psychotherapy, where the therapist attempts to talk to the alters to determine the cause of the dissociation, such as the abusive events that occurred. The therapist then must tell this information to all of the alters, or to the alter that is responsible for relaying

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