One Mind, Multiple Personalities : Memory and Awareness

Nissen MJ, Ross JL, Willingham DB, et al. Memory and awareness in a patient with multiple personality disorder. Brain Cogn. 1988;8:17–134.

This article mainly talks about case study conducted on a patient with DID/MPD. Results suggest that each of the personalities are not aware of one another. It mentions the different personalities, describes them and the tests conducted while each of the "Alters" were present. The authors suggest, that depending on the personality traits of each of those "alters", information given may or may not have been iatrogenic (information suggested by therapist accepted and interpreted by the patient and seen as own memory). The article does not explain the disorder itself too closely and immediately goes into the case study itself, which for a psychologist, is not a problem, but without having a background in psychology, a lot of the vocabulary used may not be easy to understand for everyone. However, what this text does very well is describing the process of the study conducted as well speaking about awareness and memory within a body diagnosed with said disorder.

Welcome to my blog!

Dissociative Identity Disorder, or formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder, is and has been a highly controversial topic in terms of diagnosis as well as treatment. It is a severe condition in which two or more distinct identities, or personality states, are present in—and alternately take control of—an individual. Even in today's advanced field of psychology, this dissociative disorder still remains highly underdiagnosed due to not many people knowing about its symptoms since signs of DID may be invisible and have a rather small window of viability. At the same time, cases of misdiagnosis have been surfacing over the past decades as well. In order to be able to accurately diagnose the right amount of the population, more people need to be made aware of the characteristics, possible causes and treatments of this disorder.

I am a Psychology Major and have always found Dissociative Disorders highly interesting. After just having studied Dissociative Identity Disorder in my Abnormal Psychology class a few weeks ago, I thought this was a great opportunity for me to build a blog around this topic. This disorder is often misdiagnosed (not to mention being mistaken with Schizophrenia) as well as highly underdiagnosed and more people need to be made aware of information revolving around this topic.

One Mind, Multiple Personalities

Memory and Awareness

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