Dark Side: Multiple Personality Disorder
The transition from one personality to another is spontaneous. Usually it takes place within a few seconds, but it can happen gradually, over hours or days. Stress or psychologically meaningful cues in the environment often trigger the switching of personalities. Transitions also occur when conflicts break out between personalities or in response to a plan previously agreed to by the various personalities. Hypnosis or drug-assisted interviews can facilitate personality switching.
The various personalities may be friends, companions, or enemies. They may be aware of each other, or not. Whatever the style, only one personality at a time interacts with the outside world, though others may be listening in and possibly influencing what is happening.
Some MPD patients may recognize that they have lost periods of time, develop amnesia about these times, or are subject to confusion for brief or even extended periods. These patients typically report awakening in strange places. Someone whom they met as one personality may hail them as a friend when another personality is in charge. The latter will be baffled by someone who seems to be a complete stranger. Some personalities who are unaware of losing time subconsciously fill in amnesic gaps with fabricated memories (confabulation), or have access to the memories of the other personalities, which they report as if these were their own. A quiet, “old maid” personality may alternate with a promiscuous, loud, brassy, bar-hopping, devil-maycare personality. A childlike personality may flee in terror from an attacker, whereas another personality might passively submit to the same attacker, or a third might launch a vicious counterattack.
Several of the personalities may
function reasonably well in the patient’s workplace or in interactions with
other people. These “functional” personalities may alternate with others that
function poorly or that even appear to have a specific mental disorder. Among
the more common disorders represented in these patients are mood disorder, anxiety
disorder, and the maladaptive personality traits that indicate personality
disorder.
The personalities may be so different that the eyeglass prescription for one may not fit another of the patient’s personalities, probably reflecting different stress levels. Similarly, the different personalities in one body may have different responses to the same medication, different brain wave patterns, IQ scores, and handwriting. Distinct differences also exist in preferences for foods, friends, types of entertainment, and other interests. The personalities are sometimes aware of one another and May talk with one another.
Most of the personalities are given distinct proper names, usually different from the person’s first name and often from the last name as well. The name is usually announced to the person the first time the personality “comes out” and may reflect the kind of abuse that the personality has experienced, or the sort of function it performs
Personalities are organized by the function they serve for the person. There are usually two camps: protective personalities and destructive personalities. When the destructive personalities take control, they may engage in self-mutilation, attempt to complete (or actually succeed in completing) suicide, abuse children, or commit assault, rape, or even murder. Destructive personalities harbor anger, guilt, and hatred that they direct at the host personality.
Often, the heinous crimes they commit are directly reflective of the abuse they themselves once received. The protector personalities are also formed in reaction to this child abuse. They protect the host by encapsulating painful memories and thereby permit the host personality to function in society.
Almost all parents at one time or another experience angry or violent feelings toward their children, but most do not act them out in an abusive manner. Similarly, some parents experience sexual feelings toward their children. Many do not act them out. Others do. Child abuse, more than any other destructive act, reflects the theme and title of this book: that bad men (and women) do what good men (and women) only (occasionally) dream. One of the highly psychologically damaging varieties of childhood abuse comes as a consequence of parents or caregivers who alternate between loving and abusing the child. Not all child abusers reject their children. Some child abusers love their children but, because of intense ambivalence, simultaneously hate them. Parents with poor parenting skills who were abused themselves or who become intoxicated with alcohol or drugs may harm children that they otherwise love. Children become totally bewildered by these utterly conflicting behaviors, further fostering the tendency to split off or dissociate the memories of their abuse.
Child abusers deal with the child
as though he or she has no individual identity, and exploit the child
exclusively for their own gratification. This kind of abuse is referred to as soul murder. Soul murder deprives the child of a personal identity and of the
ability to experience
joy in life. It is characterized by sometimes brutal, sometimes subtle acts of abuse against children that makes them act like whipped dogs—bonding them emotionally to their abuser because they can turn to no one else. The end product of the abuse is a tragic psychic and spiritual annihilation of the child’s core self.
Summarizing, more than the
memories themselves, patients are very frightened and are loathe to
reexperience the death-gripping terror and paralytic feelings that accompany
memories of sexual abuse. If the right combination of thoughts, feelings, or
situations is struck, terrifying memories of abuse long forgotten can be
unlocked.
Acknowledgements:
Bibliography:
1. Criminal
Investigations – Crime Scene Investigation.2000
Komentarze
Prześlij komentarz