Multiple Personality Disorder Analysis

Multiple personality disorder, which is now known as dissociative identity disorder (DID) is a mental illness which affects lots of people and according to the Cleveland Clinic Foundation it is an illness which involves disruptions or breakdowns of memory, awarness, identity and/or perception (The Cleveland Clinic Foundation 1995-2014). The cause of these symptomes can result into an interference of a person’s life such as his social activties, his good health. Multiple personality disorder is one of the hardest diseases to spot and its effects tend to usually reach the point of the patient’s self harm and suicide.

Before we venture in the destructive world of DID, we must first give a brief definition of this disorder and state what specialists

To begin with, female patients make up 90% of the multiple personality cases that have been diagnosed. Moreover, it has been noticed that women are more likely to portray different personalities than men, which averages between 15 separate identities at a time (Showalter 162 retrieved from, Lehman, 2014, p.65). However, one might wonder the cause behind the high number of diagnosis of multiple personality disorders found in women. Psychologists have came up with few reasons including, first, people who display symptoms that are related to this disorder were mainly classified as hysterical people, which was label in history that was usually given to women rather than men. In addition, statistics have shown that girls are more prone than boys to face childhood sexual abuse and we have mentioned previously that having multiple personality disorder is mainly caused by shutting out unwanted emotions such as anger. Moreover, women in society are often expected to fill plenty of social roles which lead them to suffer from number of personalities they must take upon themselves (Lehman, 2014,

The media has taken upon itself to bring to life the stories of these women. For instance, the infamous story of Sybil the women with 16 different personalities. Sybil’s main reason for her disease was linked to the good and bad relationship she had with her mother as well as several childhood sexual abusing. Multiple personality disorder struck Sybil when she started to have hysterical breakdowns everytime she’d bring a date back to her apartment. She was lonely and lacked companionship and she could not understand why. Sybil’s multiple personality disorder was later discovered to be caused by a very troubled childhood when she had a flashback with her psychologist as she was overtaken by the personality of a toddler. Sybil’s flashback took her back to her schizophrenic mother who used to tie her with bondage, dip her in ice-water and perform penetration using buttonhooks( Lehman, 2014, p.69-70). This abuse caused Sybil to create 16 different personalities, each one representing something she fears, something she yearns to be, or something she wishes she was as a child. First personality was herself, then there was a French girl, an assertive and angry girl, an intellectual, a writer and painter, a male builder, a male carpenter, a politician, a baby, a religious fanatic and a teenager. Sybil’s