For the most part, we go through life knowing exactly who we are. But, for about 1% of the world’s population, this is not the case. People with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) have to live with multiple personalities inside of them, all with different backgrounds, opinions, likes, and dislikes. While many people believe that DID is fictional, in reality, it is a very real disorder, and the misconceptions of DID have very harmful effects on those who develop it. Those who doubt the authenticity of DID should be made aware of what it is, its history, the scientific proof of DID, the many real issues that those with DID have to face, and the treatments that patients go through to control the disorder. Dissociative Identity Disorder is a disorder in which two or more distinct and developed personalities exist within one person. DID is …show more content…
His patient was a German woman who began speaking perfect French, behaving like a French aristocrat, and speaking German with a French accent. According to Gmelin’s accounts, the German woman knew nothing about her other personality, while her other personality knew everything that the German woman did. In the 1970’s, the diagnosis of DID rose exponentially, due to the publication of a book titled ‘Sybil’, about a woman diagnosed with DID. During this time, more DID cases were reported than in all of history since 1816. DID was first included in the Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-I) in 1952 as a psychoneurotic disorder. In 1968, the DSM-II was published and DID was renamed hysterical neurosis, dissociative type. In 1980, the DMS-III was published and it included the term “dissociative” as a class of disorders, which led to the increase in the diagnosis of “multiple personality disorder”. In DSM-IV, multiple personality disorder was renamed Dissociative Identity Disorder, which is the name it now goes by. (Tracy,