About multiple personality - a rare and amazing disorder, quite famous but not understood. Read and you will understand.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - even those who haven't read the book or seen one of the movies - know, or at least heard of, this imaginary story. There are known cases of people having more than one personality and even ten, twenty, or even more different personalities. Each personality emerges and appears from time to time and has a different name, features, behavior and accent, different taste in clothing, different knowledge, skills and memories and most important of all - the basic personality does not know the others and is not aware of them. There are even cases of one (or more) personality being of the opposite sex, meaning if the patient is female then she has a personality that is male and vice versa.
This disorder was previously considered rare but this is because many patients with this disorder were not properly diagnosed. Today it is believed to be more common, although even today it happens that those with it are mistakenly diagnosed as suffering from another disorder.
books and movies
This disorder is called Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). In the past it was called Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD). In various Hebrew sources, this disorder is called split personality.
In the past, claims were heard that this disorder is not a real phenomenon, and its image is obtained as a result of the interaction between the therapist and the patient, a kind of implanting false memories in good faith through suggestion.
This disorder should not be confused with schizophrenia, a common mental illness in which the integration between the emotional and logical components of the personality is impaired.
Dissociative identity disorder is an amazing and interesting disorder that is difficult to grasp and understand. There are famous cases of her that have been documented in literature and even adapted into a film.
- Eve - in the film Three Faces for Eve from the XNUMXs.
- Sybil - in the book of the same name that was also published in Hebrew in 1987 - is recommended. A film was also produced based on this book, although it is not faithful to the original and does not accurately describe the disorder.
- Billy Milligan - in the book The 24 Faces of Billy Milligan, which was also published in Hebrew in the seventies.
- Sara - In the original book, Love Is Not a Knife, which was published in 1998. The book describes a local case (in Israel) and was written by the treating psychologist together with the patient (unlike the others written by journalists).
serial killer
The above names are fictitious, with the exception of the name of Billy Milligan who received regular press exposure in the USA, because one of his characters was a rapist and serial killer and the question of his criminal responsibility came up in full force during his trial. The claim, of course, is that he is not the killer, but another personality that took over him. Sybil's real name was revealed some years after the book appeared.
As mentioned, many cases of this disorder are not diagnosed. When the patient returns from one of his characters to the basic personality - he is not aware of everything that happened to him during the abnormal character period and this is attributed by the treating psychologist or psychiatrist (if the patient receives treatment at all) to forgetfulness - amnesia. The abnormal behavior during the period when another personality took over is explained as instability, strangeness, etc.
Jumping to another country
Imagine that you find yourself in a foreign city, or even in a foreign country and you don't remember how you got there and why and what's more - you don't even know where you are and you need to start finding out. Then maybe you also don't have money and necessary personal belongings. Your belongings may be in any hotel but you don't know about it. Quite surreal. Or something less serious - you find clothes in your closet that you don't remember when you bought them - and in general, they are not to your taste. This is what happens to patients with dissociative identity disorder after switching from personality to personality.
The lost time
Sybil, a third grade student, attended the funeral of her grandmother who passed away and suddenly she finds herself in the classroom. How she jumped from the funeral to the classroom - Mila, she had previously experienced feelings of loss of time and managed to get along with it, but there are stranger things. She recognizes her classmates, but they look strange to her - they are definitely older. She herself wears a dress and she does not remember when it was bought for her. They are being taught by a teacher who is not supposed to be teaching them according to the curriculum and also what she is teaching seems inappropriate to Sibyl.
skip two classes
With great relief, Sybil meets her beloved teacher during the break, but she realizes from the conversation that she is no longer her teacher. Sybil jumped all at once, without feeling from the third grade to the fifth grade, but she learned to deal with it herself, without sharing the loss of time with others - as she used to in the past. At school and at home they wonder how Sibyl, who excelled in mathematics, suddenly doesn't know anything. Her behavior has also changed.
Each personality has its own name and history. Sybil, or rather one of her other characters, wonders why people call her by a name other than her real name, but she learns to accept it without commenting on it. Sometimes she meets people who know her but she doesn't know them. She learned to act, because otherwise they think she's weird or arrogant.
A defense mechanism
Every person goes through unpleasant things in life and sometimes he tries to suppress them to the point of oblivion. This is a defense mechanism. It turns out that those suffering from dissociative identity disorder went through terrible abuse in their early childhood. Try to imagine the most horrible things that can be done to a girl or boy aged from a few months to the age of seven. What those patients went through, is much worse. When this happened - and more than once, someone else emerged from among them who was the one who went through the terrible experience and released the memory of the traumatic experiences from the basic personality. And so later on in their lives, every time they were faced with a threatening situation, the most suitable and qualified personality to handle that situation emerged and took over them. This is a very simplistic and comprehensive explanation, but this is the principle mechanism.
Treatment
The treatment of this disorder is mainly done with classic techniques of psychoanalysis and hypnosis. The patient is gradually exposed to the initial traumas and he learns to know the different entities in him (sometimes it happens that initially, certain entities learn to know each other). Finally, full integration is achieved between all of them. What is certain is that the therapist is not bored - each time a different patient comes to him and sometimes he also changes in the middle of the treatment.
