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Dissociative Identity Disorder
(formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder)
See Also:
DID:
Introduction
DID:
Overview
DID:
Symptoms
DID: Causes
DID:
Diagnosis
DID:
Treatment
Dissociative Identity
Disorder Causes
According to the available
information, the exact causes of dissociative identity
disorder are not known and nobody can explain why the
disorder develops. However, dissociative identity
disorder is considered to be the result of the
interaction between three major factors: an overwhelming
stress, the lack or insufficient support and comfort in
response to the traumatizing experiences encountered
during childhood, and an innate ability to dissociate
(the ability to disconnect or separate memories,
perceptions, or identity from conscious awareness).
Although, the abuse was documented in 85 percent of the
adults and 95 percent of the children and adolescence
diagnosed with DID, it is not the only form of trauma
that facilitates the development of the disorder. In some
cases, patients with DID did not suffer from abuse, but
suffered an early loss (the loss of a parent), a serious
health illness, or had lived through stressful
experiences.
Proponents of the theory
that explain the development of DID as a result of
extraordinary childhood trauma (particularly sexual or
other forms of abuse conducted by adults), believe that a
child bares the pain of the abuse by using two defense
mechanisms, dissociation (the abuse is experienced as it
happened to someone else) and repression (which allows
the child to forget that the abuse happened at all).
However, when these two defenses become overused to cope
with the everyday stress the child's develops
"dissociated internal structures" which in time
crystallize into alter personalities. (3)
The deleterious effect of
abuse on the growth and development of a child was well
documented and proven to be associated with several
mental disorders, one of them being dissociative identity
disorder. According to the developmental perspective,
children are not born with the sense of a unified
identity which shapes up in time as a result of the
experiences encountered during childhood. The need to
develop a healthy internalized model to regulate emotions
and cope with stress, and a sense of self is important
for this stage of development. The sense of self arises
as the result of parental care and nurture towards the
child's needs and feelings. When the child is rased in a
climate of violence, they develop "a profound
absence of self" and the psychological portrait
is dominated by traits such as vulnerability, danger,
identification with the victim role, guilt, self-blame,
and an "intense confusion of identity and
responsibility." This can result in a fragmentation
of the self and "the development of false
selves" or "a variety of different
identifications."
A violent environment can
also have a negative impact on how young children learn
to regulate their emotions and cope with stress. An
adequate care and "the parental capacity to
empathize" with the infant's stress, allows the
infant to internalize a "supportive parental
figure and to take control of overwhelming stress for
themselves." An "abusive care fails to
deal adequately with distress, and replaces containing
calmness and coping with frustration, anger, rage,
withdrawal, disruption, physical shaking, hitting,
pinching, burning." When later in life the
child encounters traumatic events such as sexual,
physical or emotional abuse the child lacks the ability
to deal with the situation and can react by blanking out,
deleting or dissociating the reality. (5)
The etiology (branch of
knowledge concerned with causes and origins of a
disorder) of dissociative identity disorder is one of the
controversial issues in contemporary clinical psychology,
and the ongoing debate (unresolved due to lack of
sufficient data) is carried between two points of view:
the trauma model and sociocognitive (or
iatrogenesis/suggestibility) model.
According to the the trauma
model, dissociative identity disorder is a defensive
response to early trauma (particularly severe sexual and
physical abuse) where individuals "dissociate or
compartmentalize their subjective experience into
alternate personalities as a mean of coping with the
emotional pain of the trauma." According to the
sociocognitive model, DID is a "syndrome that
consists of rule-governed and goal-directed experiences
and displays of multiple role enactments that have been
created, legitimized, and maintained by social
reinforcement." Based on the perspective
offered by the sociocognitive model, patients with DID "learn
to construe themselves as possessing multiple
selves" and "learn to present
themselves in terms of this construct." (7) The
person adopts and enacts "social roles geared to
their aspirations and the demand characteristics of
varied social contexts", roles which "tend
to flow spontaneously and are carried out with little or
no conscious awareness and with a high degree of
"organismic involvement." (6)
One of the biggest
differences between both models is the explanation for
the emergence of alters. While the trauma model claims
that alters are the result of severe child abuse or other
traumatic events, the sociocognitive model states that
alters result as "a consequence of therapist
influences, media portrayals, and sociocultural
expectations."
See Also:
DID:
Introduction
DID:
Overview
DID:
Symptoms
DID: Causes
DID:
Diagnosis
DID:
Treatment
Article by Alina Morrow,
MS Psychology
OmniMedicalSearch.com
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