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."

Conditions & Diseases: Psychological & Mental Health

Dissociative Identity Disorder
(formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder)

Conditions & Diseases: Psychological & Mental Health

Dissociative Identity Disorder (formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder)

Dissociative Identity Disorder
(formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder)