Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD)
or
Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)
Dissociative Identity Disorder is sometimes a controversial issue, but
never question the reality of it. It is real and I also want to emphasize
that help is available for those who need and want it. To those survivors
dealing with Dissociative Identity Disorder, either personally, a support
person, helping family member or friend, hope is essential and real.
Demonic? Perhaps there may be some demonic involvement. It is
always possible but not usually probable. We must be perfectly
clear on the next point; alter personalities are not demons nor
can they be "cast out" as demons can. Would be exorcists
can be very harmful to the system. Alters are a part of the
whole person and need to be returned to the fold, so to speak. They need
to be "integrated" back into the core personality becoming part
and strengthening that core personality or brought to assist in the functioning
of the whole person.
What is the genesis of Dissociative Identity Disorder? Many who have
or treat this disorder believe that God uses it to protect the person from
severe mental trauma, one so severe that they are unable to cope with it
any other way. The effect can be as extreme as total amnesia or just a
temporary submerging or removal of one's self from the trauma mentally.
Amnesia can be the blocking out in the mind of an event or a series
of events surrounding a traumatic experience. If that trauma is excessive,
extensive, ritualistic and/or over a prolonged period, especially if the
person is a child (birth to 5 or 6 years old) that blocked out memory can
surface as flash-backs, nightmares and even another personality.
Some call this suppressed memory, however it is not suppressed nor is
it sub-conscious, it is blocked or "packaged" in the brain and
protectively partitioned off from the "normal" conscious. For
a time the memory is "forgotten" but it is still there imprinted
on the mind. Over a prolonged period of trauma, that part of the mind gathers
so much information that it may become a separate identity.
The mind is tough and elastic, but can cope with only so much and then
it shuts down in protection. At that point one of two things may happen:
1) the person may become catatonic - blocking out the entire
outside world and withdrawing totally inward. or,
2) encapsulate the trauma into one or more compartments of
the mind sealed off from the conscious and from each
other wholly or partly.
This second part is a type of amnesia and the basis of the formation
of multiple personalities or dissociated personalities
This section of this Site will deal with issues of Dissociative Identity
Disorder. At this Web site are caring experts in this field. If you have
a comment, a question or if you need help dealing with this type issue
please click on
to write
us. All responses will be kept secure and confidential. Answers to issues
may be given to help others but the source will not be compromised in any
way. Safety of our correspondents, sources and/or clients is of prime importance
to us.
This has only touched on Dissociative Identity Disorder - there is
much more to it and as many different kinds of people as there are alter
identities.
Recommended Reading for the skeptic and others
----------------------------------------------- More Than One, Terri A.Clark, M.D., Oliver-Nelson Books, 1993 Uncovering the Mystery of MPD, James Friesen, Ph.D., Here's Life,
1991
