Personality is the particular combination of emotional, attitudinal, and behavioral response patterns of an individual. The word ‘personality’ has many definitions. Most people would define ‘personality’ as an individual’s character, or what makes one unique, consisting of a set of characteristics known as traits. “The visible aspect of one's character as it impresses others. The sum total of the physical, mental, emotional, and social characteristics of an individual or the organized pattern of behavioral characteristics of the individual” – Dictionary.com. It has been a long controversy about how nature and nurture imply to personality traits and human behavior. Nature means that genetic factor and the system of organs control the personality, while nurture means the personality is a result of conditioned circumstances where a person is brought up. Recent studies find more in human biological system that genes are related to people’s behavior. Many researchers believe that genetics factors determine how someone will act and think in his or her life. From the moment a person is born, his or her personality begins to take shape. In infancy, childhood, and later adolescence, the individual explores a multitude of behaviors. Of all the behaviors, or personalities, the person experiences, one of them will stick with them until the day they die.
Unfortunately, each specific personality also contains a personality disorder. Personality disorders can result in anxiety attacks, depression, and to a certain level, suicide. Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), also known as multiple or split personality (MPD), is one of them. “A rare disorder in which an individual displays several functionally dissociated personalities, each of a complexity comparable to that of a normal individual” – Dictionary.com.
A woman developed multiple personalities as the result of being abused as a child. She took on a range of personalities to escape the trauma. She had been abused by her father and grandfather du
ring her childhood, starting with physical assaults by her dad when she was just a baby. The mother-of-two began developing imaginary people aged between two to 34 to bear the brunt of the abuse. This psychological malady, known as Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) Dissociative Identity Disorder. Multiple personality disorder, or dissociative personality disorder, is a dissociative disorder involving a disturbance of identity in which two or more separate and distinct personality states control the individual's behavior at different times. The different identities, referred to as alters, may exhibit differences in many areas, including speech, mannerisms, beliefs, and gender orientation. A person with MPD can have as many as a hundred or as few as two separate personalities. These different identities can resemble the normal personality of the person or they may take on that of a different age, sex, or race. Each alter can have its own posture, set of gestures, and hair-style, as well as a distinct way of dressing and talking. The cause of this disorder is unknown; however, 97% of the patients with this disorder have been abused during childhood. MPD occurs about eight times more frequently in women than in men. Some researchers believe that because men with MPD tend to act more violently than women, they are jailed rather than hospitalized and, thus, never diagnosed. Female MPD patients often have more identities than men, averaging fifteen as opposed to eight for males. Most people diagnosed with MPD were either physically or sexually abused as children. Many times when a young child is severely abused, he or she becomes so detached from reality that what is happening may seem more like a movie or television show than real life. Not all children who are severely and repeatedly abused develop multiple personality disorder. However, if the abuse is repeatedly extreme and the child does not have enough time to recover emotionally, the disassociated thoughts and feelings may begin to take on lives of their own. Each cluster of thoughts tends to have a common emotional theme such as anger, sadness, or fear. Eventually, these clusters develop into full-blown personalities; each with its own memory and characteristics.
MPD can be treated and in many cases people have managed to recover from split personality disorder with the help of various treatments. The goals of treatment for MPD are to relieve symptoms, to ensure the safety of the individual, and to "reconnect" the different identities into one well-functioning identity. Treatment also aims to help the person safely express and process painful memories, develop new coping and life skills, restore functioning, and improve relationships. The best treatment approach depends on the individual and the severity of his or her symptoms. Treatment for MPD consists mainly of psychotherapy with hypnosis, although medications are sometimes given to help the individual cope with insomnia, depression or anxiety. Other than that, MPD can be treated by medication, clinical hypnosis, art and music therapy etc.
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