Is Multiple Personality Disorder a Natural Evolutionary Phenomenon?

[Mentat]

I haven't read anything particularly recent on this topic, so I have some questions:

1) Does it actually exist, prior to therapy?

This may seem like a really stupid question, but there have been papers on the topic that indicated it could be conjured up by the patient's subconscious due to prompting from the psychiatrist.

2) Is it a result of a natural occurrence in our mental evolution?

As a child's brain evolves, and starts to take on some concept of self, does the child always choose one out of many? Do some children just never choose, and thus spend their lives with distinct -- and possibly conflicting -- personalities? Is one's personality (one's self) just a collection of the common denominator's among all of that one's sub-personalities (this questions could use some explanation, I think: basically, I am not exactly the same person while Mentat on the Physicsforums, as I am while reading in my room, or while at my Kingdom Hall, or while at school, &c...so, could it be that we don't really have a personality, but many sub-personalities that share some common denominators and thus create the illusion of a singular "person")?

3) If so, then where does one draw the line between normal collaboration of sub-personalites, and MPD?

 

[loseyourname]

Isn't this a psychology (social sciences) question?

 

[Mentat]

Isn't this a psychology (social sciences) question?

Yeah, you're probably right. Kerrie or Hypna should probably move it to a more appropriate forum.

 

[phoenixthoth]

i'm convinced that mpd aka dissociative identity disorder, in modern terms, exists. i have blackouts and while blacked out i find later evidence that i was conscious on some level (food on the ground, cigarettes strewn about, books rearranged, writing posted i don't remember, having conversations i don't remember having had, etc). what happened to me is the equivalent of another personality coming forward and taking over for a while.

i don't know what it's a result of but research indicates a high correlation between sexual abuse as a child and d.i.d..

i would guess that it's a defense/coping mechanism not dissimilar from repression that one may judge to be a more evolved way of coping or a less evolved way of coping.

memory sure is funny...

 

[Moonbear]

As with any mental disease, it's hard for people without it to even comprehend how it can be real, how the mind can think so completely differently.

I think it's an interesting point you bring up about how everyone acts a little differently depending on the situation they are in. For example, I might say or do things among a group of old friends that I would never do in the company of co-workers or when visiting relatives. I haven't looked into any literature on what's known about multiple personality disorder, but on an intuitive level, that makes a lot of sense, that it could just be an extreme of the way normal people change their behaviors based on who they are around, or a loss of the ability to control when certain facets of their personality appear.

 

[phoenixthoth]

i think part of dissociative identity disorder is forgetting what was done while under one's "alter ego," not just having a push-button personality (like radio channels) as EVERYONE (or almost everyone) acts differently around different people (say your best chums over a couple of six packs vs the priest at your wife's funeral).

 

[Evo]

phoenixthoth, are you currently under treatment for this? Or are you just trying to deal with it on your own?

 

[phoenixthoth]

my doctor thinks antipsychotics will help prevent blackouts so i take abilify.

http://www.healthyplace.com/medications/abilify.htm

what i have is more like dissociative amnesia rather than dissociative identity disorder. d.i.d.'s treatment involves talk-therapy as much as medication, if not more so. the personalities are recombined through therapy. one of my friends had d.i.d. and his alter ego was named bj. bj would make friends with people and then *** would see a stranger who seemed to know him that bj had made friends with. he'd also wake up in strange places wearing different clothes; something that has happened to me twice.

mind you these blackouts are not induced by drugs or alcohol.

so yes, i am under treatment and my last blackout was months ago. woot woot.

 

[Ad Infinitum NAU]

I just got off a 17 hour shift, so please beware my unorganized thoughts

I would say that m.p.d.'s do exist. i actually wouldn't call it a "disorder". I think it's more ordered than a single personality, depending on what argument that statement is made. Clearing myself up, I've read much about the mind, as well as the "holographic principle". mpd's fit in rather nicely into the holographic principle, being described as the mind's ability to tap into the hologram and pick up different signals. think of your radio dial. tuning into your favorite program can sometimes leave you frustrated because you receive signals from 2 different radio stations simultaneously. this may be what's happening to mpd sufferers. their mind is tapping into the hologram, but is getting mixed signals, so sometimes it's on 95.5 FM, other times its on 96.3 FM.

Another explanation may be due to the mind's ability to have a "mind" of its own. I've posted about this before. The conscious and the subconscious self are sometimes different. Mpd's could possibly be the subconscious self overruling the conscious. This also could explain sleep walking, and dream states.

Sorry again for the highly unorganized post, but I wanted to get this out before I forgot it all. night, and i'll see yall whenever I'm free again.

 

[Moonbear]

i actually wouldn't call it a "disorder". I think it's more ordered than a single personality, depending on what argument that statement is made.

That's an interesting way of putting it. Of course, by disorder, we don't mean disorganization but malady or illness. But the idea that someone with MPD is actually more "organized" or "ordered" might be a good assessment. Instead of all aspects of their personality being crammed into one "identity," they have a separate identity for each aspect of their personality. Everything is very neatly compartmentalized. This seems to also fit with the history of traumatic events triggering MPD, where it becomes almost a survival mechanism to compartmentalize the reaction to those events and associate those thoughts and memories with an identity other than the one that continues to function in every day society.