Oh, and H, if you need anything or have any more questions, PM me. I can look things up and email my mom's psychology professors.
The problem with DID is it is rare and not well understood or studied. You can find some free online course lectures on abnormal psychology, and DID is covered. Berkeley's website has a few. You should be able to find a book on DID written by a psychologist/psychiatrist, or a book on abnormal psychology that covers DID. Or even a book on disassociation disorders in general. I have some experience with two people that have this disorder. Both only had it temporarily. It somehow popped up and left on its own, very strange. I often wonder if they were acting and don't realize it. That is actually on theory. That they are acting and know what they are doing, but lie about it. If you want first hand experience with one, you might be able to visit a nut-house, pardon the slang. From my understanding, the cause of DID is compartmentalization. The person sort of honeycomes their mind. This is usually caused by a series of traumatic experiences. In a way we all sort of do it. When anger possess someone they can seem like a very different person.
The thing is, DID doesn't do that. You acquire it as a child, and usually don't have any idea that you have it until well into adulthood. So it never really appears out of nowhere--you just don't realize you had it. Once you know about it and look back at your life, you'll recognize signs all over the place. As for it leaving, there are some who believe that the alternate personalities can merge together into one whole person--a process which generally requires a lot of time, patience, effort, and cooperation among the alters. Integration doesn't happen overnight, and from what I've heard, most of the time it doesn't last . . . which leads me to believe that perhaps it never truly happened in the first place, but was merely a case of wishful thinking, or a forced suppression of the personalities, whether mentally or the result of certain medications that act on the nervous system. That's just my personal theory, but regardless, DID doesn't just up and vanish one day. There are a number of possible explanations: 1. Your friends' alters went into hiding; 2. They went into denial about the matter (a very common occurrence); 3. They integrated over time without choosing to tell anyone they were doing so; 4. They switched to a different alter, one who isn't aware that they're multiple. There may be a few people who lie to their friends about having it and are merely acting for the attention. Just like there are some people who lie about their age, their income, their education, or their social status. But multiples in general aren't lying. Considering how many ignorant people there are who still think it's an imaginary disorder, or that it's demonic possession, or just plain creepy, I think most people seeking attention would find something more socially acceptable to feign. In any case, it's easy for a psychologist to tell if someone truly has DID or not. One of the main test questionnaires for dissociative disorders has well over 200 questions, many of which seem senseless or weird. But a professional analysis of the test results can determine whether a person is lying about being multiple. It also charts exactly how dissociative they are, whether they're acting out for attention, and so on. They even did a study to determine whether being multiple could be faked. They put together a group of people diagnosed with DID and a group who'd been told how to act in order to fake it. They all took a series of tests, and when it was done, the psychologists had successfully identified every single actor and every single legitimate case. Sorry to disappoint you, but this isn't the 1700s where anyone "weird" could be chucked in the loony bin. The only reason a patient with DID would be put in a mental hospital is if they were having a crisis and were a danger to themselves or others. In other words, if they had a breakdown and tried to commit suicide. They'd be at the very end of their rope, with no alternatives but hospitalization. So going and asking for an interview would be the height of poor taste, not to mention being disrespectful and rude.
Orianna I have to disagree, I do not think it is rude. I suppose it could be rude, but that depends on how it is done. My grandmother worked at the Napa state hospital for many years, and I visited. There were a few DID that stayed there. They can admit their selves. Also it is not really accurate to say that DID starts when your a child. Most of the time the roots of it go back to childhood, but the personalities had not yet separated. Sometimes it takes another traumatic event later in life to cause the personalities to emerge. DID is said to not be able to spontaneously go away, but it is also often misdiagnosed. Perhaps these people never had DID, and only for a short time had other personalities. They were never diagnosed and never took meds. But they would change personalities completely, and not remember anything about it. I mean big changes too. One of the personalities was, well, demonic. It acted like a demon. Said it was a demon. Talked about angels, God, Satan, and how old it was, etc. That personality was very odd. But that is not unheard of for DID. Well at least in America were Christianity is the main religion. After their personalities disappeared, they never returned. Shoot it has been 10 years now, and they are still gone. No sign of them at all. Weird stuff happens I guess, that psychologist might never figure out. Also there is so much disagreement among professionals about DID. It is really not understood. At this page is a course of lectures on clinical psychology. It is free. Lecture mon 10/2 is about DID. For anyone interested. Also there are three lectures about schizophrenia.
DID invariably develops during childhood, from everything I have read on the subject, and from the various multiples I have gotten to know in the past couple of decades. alters do disappear "spontaneously" - some "die" or withdraw indefinitely, some split off into others who perform the same functional role, some are no longer needed as life situations change. Integration of personalities can take place through therapy, and also sometimes alters spontaneously merge. But it is a learned coping mechanism, and tends to dominate over otehr coping mechanisms. New alters do appear in crises at any age, end even if the person learns new coping strategies, dissociation is never "unlearned". Splitting into alters is really an extreme extension of what most people do normally. When you are in a different functional environment, you adopt behaviors consistent with that role. You often hear of someone "putting on her management hat", or "stepping into party mode" The extremism occurs when the different functional modes becime independent and block out knowledge of other roles' actions so they can escape dealing directly with intolerable situations. And just to clarify - lest someone reading architectus' comment above assumes otherwise - schizophrenia is NOT the same thing as DID. The confusion arises because people used to refer to schizophrenia as a "split personality". However, they are entirely different conditions in nearly evey possible way.
COG true. Actually after mentioning the three lectures on schizophrenia I thought perhaps someone might think I was associating the two. I was going to edit it and make a comment, but got side tracked. In a way I feel like DID at times when I write. Anyone else feel that way? Not that I black out or anything, but it does feel like other personalities take over at times. And I watch it happen. I am often surprised at what is typed.
Like Cogitio said, it's true that an alter can die or merge with another, but that's a very different thing from all of them just up and vanishing. As far as I know, there's no such thing as "temporary DID". However, there are other disorders that feature fugues and amnesia, as well as disorders where someone's personality can abruptly change. Just to clarify, there are no medications specifically for treating DID. Someone with DID might be given medicine for depression or anxiety or any number of coincidental symptoms, but right now there's no drug to actually treat dissociation. Yes, someone can choose to put themselves in a mental hospital. But considering how expensive in-patient treatment is these days, and the fact that mental hospitals are not nice places, someone would have to be quite desperate to check themselves in for treatment. Now, I don't know if you've ever experienced what it feels like to think you're losing your mind, but I can tell you that it's terrifying. And if I was in a situation like that, if I was feeling so lost and helpless and insane that I needed to be in a hospital, and then someone comes around asking what it's like to be me . . . not a doctor or other professional, but someone who's just curious, or writing a book? Let me tell you, I'd tell them where to shove their curiosity! If someone wants to talk to a multiple, they'd have much better success at a conversation if they found someone who isn't institutionalized. It's not all that rare of a condition, so there's plenty out there if you know where to look. No offense, but that sounds like something you'd see on a soap opera! Sorry, but it just plain isn't true. Alternate personalities begin forming during that period when a child's brain is still developing, before they have a true sense of self identity. Otherwise it'd be impossible for them to exist. They separate the moment they're created, the moment the child dissociates to escape whatever trauma is happening. If it continues to happen, the alters develop their own personalities, in order to "fill in the gap" when the child isn't present. Now, it's true that the child might not have any idea that the alters are there. Even as an adult, someone with DID might not be aware that they have multiple personalities, but that's because there's a certain amount of secrecy involved. The alters take over during a traumatic event, and they hold those memories in themselves, because they're the ones who lived through it--not the child. That way the child can live a "normal" life, without anyone suspecting the abuse. It works the same way during adulthood: the person often has no memory when an alter takes over, or they might be aware but not in control of their actions. At least in the beginning, before they learn how to communicate with their alters and start sharing consciousness. Granted, the amnesia might be different for someone who develops DID as a result of, say, autism instead of abuse or trauma, but in any case, the alters certainly form and exist during childhood. There are people with DID who can trace the behavior of certain alters back to their teenage years, or earlier. At the time, they didn't understand what was going on, but looking back with the knowledge, they're able to identify an alter's actions and make sense of a lot of things that happened. If "the personalities had not yet separated", this wouldn't be possible. It may seem like a traumatic event is what triggers DID to break out in an adult, but usually it's merely that something has happened to cause the person to finally become aware of their dissociation. Sometimes it takes a mental breakdown for this to occur, which can be traumatic in itself. It is possible (though rare) for new alters to be created during adulthood, but this is merely a continuation of what happened during childhood. (I hope I explained this adequately! It's such a complicated subject that it's easy to get confused.)
