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“It is a condition where there are several completely different personalities in one body. It’s also known as dissociative identity disorder. It’s been in the psychiatric literature for more than two hundred years. It usually starts because of a childhood trauma. The victim shuts out the trauma by creating another identity. Sometimes a person will have dozens of different personalities or alters.” Dr.Salem said.

I startled when I read the above extract from the Sidney Sheldon’s Tell Me Your Dreams novel. This book is a murder mystery and medical courtroom drama, which took me two days to finish. It is about Ashley Patterson who works in a computer firm. She doesn’t realise that she suffered from the multiple dissociative disorder or multiple personality disorder illness until 5 men were brutally murdered and castrated. All of them were having sex before the murder took place. And all the evidence points to Ashley being involved in the cases.

David was hired by her father to defend her. In the course of the court proceedings, David has to convince the jury that MPD( Multiple Personality Disorder) is real and Ashley is the victim of MPD. It turned out that she is Toni, Alette and Ashley. All the three women in one body. She killed the man but she is not guilty by the reason of insanity.

Ashley is committed to an insane asylum and in the course of therapy is introduced to her two “alters” and relives the horrific events that shattered her mind. She was sexually abused by her father during childhood and this made her to develop a strong hatred towards men.

It is based on a real life story. After finished off the book, I google to find out more about MPD or DID. Is it real? To my surprise, it is happening around the world.

What is Dissociative Identity Disorder (Multiple Personality Disorder)?

1. psychologytoday: Dissociative Identity Disorder (Multiple Personality Disorder)

Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) is a severe condition in which two or more distinct identities, or personality states, are present in — and alternately take control of — an individual. The person also experiences memory loss that is too extensive to be explained by ordinary forgetfulness.

2. webmd: Dissociative Identity Disorder (Multiple Personality Disorder)

Most of us have experienced mild dissociation, which is like daydreaming or getting lost in the moment while working on a project.  However, dissociative identity disorder is a severe form of dissociation, a mental process, which produces a lack of connection in a person’s thoughts, memories, feelings, actions, or sense of identity. Dissociative identity disorder is thought to stem from trauma experienced by the person with the disorder. The dissociative aspect is thought to be a coping mechanism — the person literally dissociates himself from a situation or experience that’s too violent, traumatic, or painful to assimilate with his conscious self.

3. wikipedia: Dissociative identity disorder

Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), as defined by the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), is a psychiatric diagnosis that describes a condition in which a single person displays multiple distinct identities or personalities, each with its own pattern of perceiving and interacting with the environment.

Symptoms

1. medicinenet: Dissociative Identity Disorder (Multiple Personality Disorder)

Multiple personalities, on average 10 though there can be as few as two and as many as 100Exhibits different personalities, behavior and even physical characteristicsEpisodes of amnesia or time loss (i.e.: don’t remember people, places, etc.)Often they are depressed or suicidal

Self-mutilation is common

1/3 of patients experience visual or auditory hallucinations

The average age for the development of alters is 5.9 years

Depressive symptoms

An inability to focus in school (in childhood)

Conduct problems (in childhood)

For more info go to here and here.

Youtube video clip shows the man with DID. I pity him.

This is a good documentary on Multiple Personality Disorder by Michael Mierendorf.