thigpen and cleckley study- the three faces of eve (multiple personality disorder)

thigpen and cleckley study- the three faces of eve (multiple personality disorder)

What is personality?

Personality can be defined as the distinctive and characteristic patterns of thought, emotion and behaviour that define an individual’s personal style and influence his or her interactions with the environment. Our common understanding is that we have one personality that makes us unique and individual. But is it possible to have more than one personality?

Multiple personality disorder

Also known as DID, appear to have all the different aspects of their personality, but each part in contained in a separate unit. Pervin suggested that in a normal person all these processes act together to form an integrated whole but people with DID, they do not form an integrated whole. Instead they stay as individual units, each one taking on aspects of individual personality, so it is as if one body contains lots of different people.  So a person can have many different personas and each would live along with each other and have different names.

In order to be diagnosed as having dissociative identity disorder, the DSM-IV-TR says the person must have at least two separate personalities which are called ego states or alters. Their existence cannot be temporary rather than be a result of drugs or alcohol.

People who suffer from DID, are likely to have gaps in their memories.it will be as if they have blackouts or lapses in memory. Sometimes one alter ego could do one thing and then the other alter ego would have to deal with the consequences

Some alters may know about some of the others, but not all of them, and some may be aware of the existence of any other personality. There are often primary alters and subordinate alters. The primary alters are the main personalities, which manifest more often. The subordinate alters have less relevance and are rarely present, or may be undetected after the disorder has been diagnosed. Often the subordinate alters may hear the voices of the others but may not be aware of who they belong to. Some alters may even talk to each other. The alter egos are very different sometimes even of the opposite sex. Some may be older than others and some may be introvert or extrovert. They may even have different physical characteristics, like right or left handed. One may even like on type of food while the other finds it disgusting.

The explanation for why DID occurs, could be that it started at childhood to deal with traumatic events. The child would learn how to deal with this by adopting an avoidance technique. The child fools themselves into believing that the traumatic event did not occur to them but to someone else and that becomes another alter. Bliss discovered that people with DID were easier to hypnotise than controls which supported the theory. Women are more likely to suffer from DID because they are more likely to have been abused as children.

A way around this would…