Multiple personality disorder

Introduction

Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) is one of the dissociative disorders (DD). A dissociative disorder makes a person to experience a transitory adjustment of consciousness. As such, the person has a tendency of diminishing the level of awareness towards the surroundings. Thus, dissociative amnesia and fugue, and depersonalization disorder are the other types of DD. At present, the MPD has been renamed and known in investigative term as the dissociative identity disorder (DID). An MPD or DID shows at least two separate identities of individuality. This as well seizes to manage the persons’ conduct.

Richmond (1997) explained that MPD is an abnormal condition in which the personality becomes so fragmented that the various parts cannot even communicate with each other. For the reason that, the personality in MPD is different within the person. This personality can have separate memories, behavior, physical attribution and even gender (http://www.fortea.us/english/psiquitria/mutiple.htm).

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Furthermore, the personality is the result of a particular problem of an individual to cope with the environment and the new personality is a mechanism created by the psyche to deal with it. The above notion of Richmond (1997) also suggest that a person develops an alters that is, the different personalities that occur to him. This is observe when the person begins to dissociate in order to create new personality as a way of avoidance to a tremendous situation.

Most of the researchers agreed to one notion, that MPD or DID has a significant factor during childhood days. It means that this identity disorder had been developed and can be traced out on past experiences that a person undergone; it can be a traumatic one or an extreme stressful events. In addition, Cherry (n.d.) stressed that this disorder occurs when a child is abused at a young age.

As a result, his personality splits into several alters to help himself handle and deal with the stress. Hence, it was argued that multiple personality is the result of coping approaches or their means of defense mechanism to keep away from a terrible scenario. Sancar (1994 – 2006) added that these created personalities are then likely to serve as mechanism for coping with situations and events dealing with one particular aspect of the traumatic experience.

According to the website (http://www.angelfire.com/nj/Dissociative), DID or MPD is often referred to as a highly creative survival techniques, because it allows an individual to endure hopeless circumstances to preserve some areas of healthy functioning. It serves as the defensive dissociation which becomes reinforced and conditioned. Evidently, dissociative escape is very effective and the patient had already mastered the alters. He may involuntarily use whenever he sense danger or trouble.  This can be concluded that MPD may arise depending on the extent of severe experience and most often referred to as defense mechanism.

Causes

More research at present explain the concept of MPD or DID. More likely, researches unified in their investigations in tracing out the origin or causes of this disorder. The cause of the disorder is as yet unknown. However, it has been argued by some researchers that the cause of MPD is due to intense stress, trauma, and even abuses. It was assumed that the on-going trauma of abuse, which happens during childhood, just when personality is developing, somehow causes alternate, distinct personalities to form.  Unlike ego, the alternate personalities can and usually do exist completely out of awareness of the main person or of each other. It is as if the alters live in isolated compartments with no communication among them.

This is most often the effect of an early awful scenario. Furthermore, a severe childhood trauma or abuses tend to create a mental split or dissociation as a defense against the traumatic situations.  In this way, they could escape the trauma of abuse, at least temporarily by creating new personalities to deal with stress. In addition, Frey (n.d.) added that the severe dissociation which characterized by DID is currently understood to result from an innate impulse to dissociate easily, repeated episodes of severe physical or sexual abuse in childhood, lack of a supportive or comforting person to counteract abusive relative(s), and the influence of other relatives with dissociative symptoms or disorder.

Moreover, based on studies women are more likely associated with MPD because they are emotional and are commonly sexually abused than men.

Some indisputable cases of DID apparently occur as a result of severe, on-going emotional, sexual, or physical abuse. We also know that DID does not seem to happen as an adult response to trauma; say for instance, men who have been tortured for years in prison apparently do not develop DID. Thus, Adult trauma, however, might bring out other personalities if the adult had developed DID in childhood. The process seem to begin only in children. This makes sense, because childhood is the time of life when personality in general develops in all of us.

Symptoms

The symptoms (FreeEssays.cc -2003) of an individual with multiple personality disorder are: lack of appropriate emotional response – that is, a person shows an awkward reaction emotionally to a particular events, for example he may project uninterested feeling to a Christmas party or low sense of empathy; memory lose – suggests of forgetting something or not knowing what they have said or done such as lost time or misplacing a thing; feeling dream like; experiencing dissociation which might include dizziness, headaches, numbness in the body; recurrent depression – which tend the person to be sad and despair; anxiety – which the  person felt panic, uneasy, uncomfortable and somehow experiencing phobias;

Substance abuse – is a typical scenario were some individuals find it as a substitute or as a defense mechanism to face their concerns, this is because they have this perception in mind that taking the substance make them feel at peace say for instance, a teenager taking marijuana to forget his family problem; eating disorder such as bulimia, anorexia or compulsive overeating– are another way of coping mechanism of a person in which he averts his attention in taking food excessively instead of facing the problem.

In other pole, a person has no appetite to take food regularly due to disturbance of the problem; for example, a girl after a break-up with her boy friend eats too much to divert her attention rather than thinking desperately or a fat lady did after six o’clock meal just to reduce weight; a man suffering stress would probably eat too much to pacify his emotional anxiety or can not eat well; sexual dysfunction – may refer or include addiction and avoidance; has low self-esteem – being not motivated, has no desire or interest to life thus the perception is frail; shame – suggest of being socially anxious or a fear of rejection or of what others might think; sleeping disturbances – which includes insomnia, nightmare and sleepwalking; mood swing – in which a person’s atmosphere changes in present setting.

Hence, Sancar (1994) added that the co-occurring symptoms and disorder that associated with DID/MPD had been consistently observed in clinical setting that MPD patients suffered such as from panic, anger, rage, sense of unreality, flashbacks, image trauma, and hyper vigilance. People diagnosed with DID also have a secondary diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Thus, another significant symptom of MPD is amnesia which can not be explained by ordinary forgetfulness. It is a state which a person cannot remember anything. Generally speaking, it is a condition that the stored information in the brain with his past experiences disappeared that would certainly give him a picture of a tabula raza (Latin word which means, all is blank and empty). Say for instance, a person with amnesia may loss his memory or any information about his past; he even forgot his name, where he lives, or his family and more forgotten scenario.

DID will not be determined if the symptoms will not cause any major disturbances to the person’s life or if they were due to the physiological effects of a substance such as: drugs or alcohol or a general medical condition. This implies that DID/MPD simply be notice when alters ignite in the person’s behavior thus, this is the time were symptoms arises.

Therapeutic Treatment

The treatment for a personality disorder will take considerable time. A few sessions of cognitive-behavioral treatment will likely not have much effect on deeply rooted unconscious conflicts. This will focus on overcoming all of the unhealthy psychological defense mechanisms that have been built up over a lifetime of emotional pain. This will be accomplished primarily through genuine, honest emotional encounters with the psychologist. In essence, the psychotherapeutic work all depends on the integrity of the psychotherapeutic relationship, through which new, psychologically healthy interpersonal behaviors and healthy boundaries will replace old, unhealthy defense mechanisms (Richmond; 1997-2000).

The same as the other personality disorder the MPD or DID is curable. However, it needs to be facilitated or attended with highly qualified practitioner. A thorough and intensive individual psychotherapy or talk therapy. In this case, the session of treatment for psychotherapy is a long-process. It may take a couple of months to a year or more to be concluded. However, a large percentage of people are cured with this method. In this approach, both the person and the therapist must have sense of connection or able to become closer which generate a more trustful companionship.

In addition, the other treatment modalities according to Halgins (1997) includes: medication – which some doctors will prescribe antidepressant for DID patient because their alter personalities may have anxiety or mood disorders sometimes patient that are been given medications become psychologically dependent. Hypnotherapy be considered for memory retrieval. The alters may come out and disclose the abusive childhood reminiscences, this is also used for calming and shooting the person during treatment. Is a standard method of treatment with DID patient, because it helps patient recover repressed ideas.

It is also an alternative treatment that will help the patient stay clam while pounding out the emotional stresses. Family therapy sessions may also help to end the cycle of abuse. Furthermore, this can be a support group to the client. Because people that are close to him especially his parents and siblings are his nurturing and extending support that would possibly help the patient’s fast recovery.

It is as well appropriate to consider the behavioral therapy approaching for DID in order to carry out the clients’ natural environment thus able to stress out the current problems and factors influencing them. For the fact that it can create new problem for learning in the assumption that learning can ameliorate problem behavior. Hence, the treatment for DID will last for five to seven year in adults and usually requires several different treatment methods.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A. Book Halgin P. Richard . 1997. Abnormal Psychology: The Human Experience of Psychology Disorders. Usa: Brown and Benchmark Publishers

B. Net Sources

Sancar Feyza 1994-2006. Exploring Multiple Personality Disorder. Available: http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro99/web3/Sancar.html

http://www.fortea.us/english/psiquitria/mutiple.htm

http://www.angelfire.com/nj/Dissociative/

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