D is for DISSOCIATIVE IDENTITY DISORDER

by Helen Borel, RN,MFA,PhD
  
   Formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD), Dissociative Personality
Disorder (DID) is one of the most baffling and difficult mental illnesses for non-
psychiatric persons to understand.  Simply, it’s a condition of ego- or Self-segments
splitting off from the main Self. This severe disruption in normal intrapsychic
development is usually due to major traumatic events in infancy, toddlerhood, later
childhood and teen years.  Beatings, sexual invasions, frequent noisy harangues,
frequent emotional intrusions, frequent and sudden rageful outbursts by Borderline
Personality mothers and other traumas can be causative.  These, somehow, cause the 
Self to fragment into sub-selves, each of whom are not aware of all the other self-fragments. 
And only the main Self knows the names and ages of each of the split-off selves.

   Note that all of this mental splitness occurs on an unconscious level. Meaning that
the person suffering Dissociative Identity Disorder is not consciously controlling
this horde of “identities” inhabiting her or his mental life.

   One Dramatic Case Shows how
   Each Self-Fragment is Sharply Self-Contained
   One of the most dramatic cases of DID, demonstrating how truly UNCONSCIOUS
a phenomenon it is, was reported in the medical literature many years ago.  It involved
a DID patient who, in her ordinary existence was highly allergic to horses and would
risk anaphylactic shock and death if in the presence of a horse without her epinephrine
(aka adrenalin) injection at the ready. However, one of her split-off selves would ride
horses without ever wheezing, itching or coughing, without ever evidencing the
slightest allergic response.

   This case demonstrates how neatly and discretely cut off from the main personality
these split-selves are.  Even the immune system, supposed to intervene in allergicities,
surrenders to the dissociative identity state.

   “Split Personality” and Eerie Experiences
   The DID person is, in a sense, a victim of the split-self horde which emerges
unbeknownst to the chief Self.  ’Though, you can be sure that some triggering event
or troubling emotion caused the main Self to recede, making an easy pathway for
one of the split-offs to act in ascendancy, with little to no awareness by the main Self.

   The main Self does know the names she/he assigned to each split-off. When taken over
by one split-off, the main Self talks like that split one, dresses like that split one, acts
that split-one’s age and suffers that split one’s concerns.

   An “eerie” feature of the DID condition is unaccounted for time, a kind of amnesia.
The patient, after the emergence of one of her split-offs, was, in a sense, living in
“another world”.  She was mentally “elsewhere”.  But when the split recedes and the
dissociative personality is “present” again, she can’t fully, or at all, explain what she was
doing, what was going on, why she exited this present moment and existed elsewhere.

   Another element of this loss of consciousness of one’s physical self is even more
stunning.  A native New Yorker, never traveled elsewhere, wakes up in a hotel in
Philadelphia and hasn’t a clue how she got there.  Zero memory of why she went there,
how she got there. Eerie. It’s a form of amnesia.  One of her split-offs took her on this
trip.

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Split Moments ~ The Rest of Us are not Immune to Dissociation
   Milder forms of the dissociative experience can happen to anyone – in “split” moments.
Did you ever have this kind of experience?  You’re in a store, at the counter, about to
pay for something when, suddenly, you feel somewhat distant, like you’re not really
there, fully, not on solid ground standing AT the counter.  It’s like the core of you has,
somehow, floated off above the cashier, near the ceiling, and you are “observing”
yourself down there, feeling cut off from others, not really present, but present watching
yourself in your interaction. Such an experience could be a normal passing event.  Or it
can signal that you are dealing with some form of stress or memory that needs to be
addressed.  Shortly, you “return” to who you really are, grounded.  But that experience
is momentary and doesn’t occur in prolonged stretches of time or repeatedly interrupting
the flow of one’s existence.

   For DID patients, splitting (dissociation) occurs often. This disrupts their family, social,
educational, career and lovelife goals and interactions.  The objective in therapy with the
DID sufferer is to integrate as many of the horde of split-offs as possible into the main
Self. Integrating all of them would be ideal.

Everyone Contains Multiple Selves
   In this regard, be aware that we all have within us (in our unconscious zone) all the
selves we ever were during every nanosecond of our lives.  Happily, the normal person’s
Self has automatically integrated all these life experience “selves”(what remain separate
entities for the DID patient) into the main Self.  It remains for the PsychoTherapist
to help the DID patient knit these mini-selves together into the Real Person so that he/she
can experience emotional wholeness, solidity of Self.

TO HELP YOU TRANSITION FROM EMOTIONAL PAIN
TO FEELING GOOD MOST OF THE TIME
CALL for my Expert, Compassionate PsychoTherapy**
                       (212) 873-5640
7 days a week, 12 Noon to 10 pm New York City time

IN-PERSON SESSIONS – Manhattan, New York City
TELEPHONE SESSIONS – NYC, all USA states, and WorldWide

**Low, subsidized fees. **You pay only what you can afford.

...and do visit my
PsychDocNYC.com
Your Emotional Comfort Zone

Whatever emotional distress or psychiatric diagnosis you are living with, my
PsychoTherapy will help you feel better and live happier. So don’t delay. The
sooner you get my help, the faster your life will become better and better.
 
(c) Copyright 2018 Dr. Helen Borel. All rights reserved. 

 

M is for MULTIPLE PERSONALITY DISORDER

See "D is for DISSOCIATIVE IDENTITY DISORDER"
by Helen Borel, RN,MFA,PhD

F is for FREUD, THE MASTER MIND

by Helen Borel,RN,MFA,PhD

   Sigmund Freud,MD, the great Austrian psychoanalyst, fathered a whirlwind revolution in psychiatric concepts and treatments.  A neurophysiologist, he pioneered, in the early 20th Century, the discovery of "the unconscious mind," along with his parallel theories and treatment approaches that underpin all of today's multitude of 
analytic and therapeutic modalities.  Whether these methods include Cognitive Behavioral, Hypnosis, Dialectical, Group, Family, EMDR, Dream Interpretation (Freud's "Royal Road to the Unconscious"), Pediatric Play Therapy, and so forth, all psychiatric practitioners stand on his genius shoulders.

   Even my own analytic-plus-direct-feedback method, which I call
Holistic Interactive Interventional Psychoanalysis, could not have emerged from my own unconscious without the genius concepts of
Dr. Freud, the great Mind Master.

   Today, despite antipsychotic medications, electroconvulsive therapy, and hospitalization treatments for schizophrenics, despite anxiolytic Rx pharmaceuticals for high anxiety, despite antidepressants for the severely depressed, despite antimanic drugs and hospitalization for bipolar disorder,all psychiatric patients benefit from psychotherapy
and should always be prescribed this in tandem with whatever medical treatments a psychiatrist orders.

   Psychotherapy, the brilliant heir of Freud's discovery of the unconscious, is not only valuable in mental illnesses. It, by now, has become essential in a myriad of problematic life circumstances.  The sundry methods that therapists use can be adapted to the highly specific needs of each individual patient.  The goal, in all cases, is to lift the therapy patient out of a malfunctioning way of life up to social, emotional, career and creative wholeness and maturity.  And to free all sufferers from suffering.

   With these goals in mind, I silently thank Dr. Sigmund Freud, when I interact with my own psychotherapy patients.

TO HELP YOU TRANSITION FROM EMOTIONAL PAIN
TO FEELING GOOD MOST OF THE TIME
CALL for my Expert, Compassionate PsychoTherapy**
                       (212) 873-5640
7 days a week, 12 Noon to 10 pm New York City time

IN-PERSON SESSIONS – Manhattan, New York City
TELEPHONE SESSIONS – NYC, all USA states, and WorldWide

**Low, subsidized fees. **You pay only what you can afford.

...and do visit my
PsychDocNYC.com
Your Emotional Comfort Zone

Whatever emotional distress or psychiatric diagnosis you are living with, my
PsychoTherapy will help you feel better and live happier. So don’t delay. The 
sooner you get my help, the faster your life will become better and better.

(c) Copyright 2018 Dr. Helen Borel. All rights reserved.