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  • Mental Roomates
    ME
    17 Jan 2003


    Popularized by movies such as Session 9, Fight Club, Primal Fear, and Sybil, Dissisociative Personality Disorder, more commonly known as Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD). MPD is a dissociative disorder, which means it "disrupts one or more mental operations that constitute the central idea of consciousness"(Piper). People with MPD often experience "delusions, experiences of being influenced, feeling that thoughts were being broadcast from their heads, and also report auditory hallucinations (which are thought to be multiple personalities speaking with one another within a body)"(Noll). Multiple Personality Disorder is an often misdiagnosed, commonly misunderstood, and frequently misrepresented disorder that has come to mass awareness in the past twenty years.
    MPD is not unusual, affecting 1.2 percent of the general population (Whitman) and is nearly always a result of severe childhood abuse. Less than 2% of MPD cases are not a result of physical, sexual, or psychological abuse. "They create a boundary so that the horror doesn't happen to them; it either happens to no one, or to some other self, better able to sustain it's organization under such an onslaught…"(Multiple Personality Disorder [Dissociative Identity Disorder]). Many phsychologists believe that the creation of a mutiple personality is a kind of coping mechanism to aid iaccepting and overcoming the abuse.(Noll)
    The symptoms of MPD are highly disruptive to the daily life of the victim. These include periods of forgetfulness, abnormal behavior, severe headaches, and blackouts. ("Multiple Personality") "The unity of conciousness by which we identify ourselves, is said to be absent in MPD" (Multiple Personality Disorder [Dissociative Identity Disorder]). Although often confused with schizophrenia, MPD is actually a very different disorder. The main reason for this inaccuracy is that the literal meaning of schizophrenia is "split-mind." (Noll) meaning that the mind is split from away from the body not split into different personalities as observed in MPD. The criteria for the identification of an MPD are as follows:
    1. Person has two or more behavior states, each with distinct ways of perceiving, relating to, and thinking about the environment around him/her.
    2. At least two of the states periodically take over a person's behavior.
    3. The person is unable to remember essential personal information that cannot be explained by ordinary forgetfulness. (Courtois)

    Although a person can have hundreds of personality fragments, phsychologists doubt that anyone has more than ten fully developed personalities. They also do not believe that anyone has more than two personalities however (McLeod). What makes MPD difficult to detect is the fact that the majority of people with the disorder are not even aware they have it ("Multiple Personality").
    Although MPD has obviously existed for as long as the human mind, it was not officially classified until 1980 when it was recognized as DSM-III. Before then only two hundred cases of the disease were reported. Since its classification MPD has been diagnosed over six-thousand times (Noll). Because of this, many phsychologists doubt the credibility of diagnoseses of MPD.
    The key to understanding MPD is to look past the statistics, to see each person as an individual. It is a horrfying and terrible disorder that plagues its victims throughout their lives. "Time was all messed up. Hours were missing from days, sometimes days were missing from weeks" (McLeod). Obviously, this quote speaks for itself and it depicts the trauma endured by the poor sufferers of the disease. Feelings of confusion, frustration, paranoia, and fear rush through them. On the other side of these disturbing chimeras are the witnesses, people who, while not directly affected by MPD are still harmed by it.Observers to people with more than one personality will often witness personalities with entirely different facial expressions, language, and style (Erwin). How shocking it must be to be in the place of someone who sees such bizarre actions being manifested.
    If any good could possibly come out of Mutliple Personality Disorder it is that people with the disorder also have several abilities such as excellent working memory, above average intelligence, and notable creativity (McLeod). Whether softly stirring in the back of someone's subconcious or flamboyantly taking over a persons actions and thoughts, as it is depicted in the media; Multiple Personality Disorder is just that. A disorder. A lack of arrnagement and regularity. It disrupts the mind and soul. It is a terrible disease that comes from terrible circumstances. There is no "used to" when it comes to MPD. It is an incurable disease of the worst kind beause it disrupts the one thing that makes people who they are, makes them special and unique, their personality.

    I did this paper for an english class assignment.