Modified: 2020-04-22
Dissociative fugue is rare and complex. Typically, fugue involves a loss of memory, with or without the acquisition of a new personality. For example, a traveling salesman may have two families in two cities and not be aware of either, but have the same personality in each setting.
Dissociative identity disorder is exceedingly rare, even though Hollywood tends grossly to overrepresent it in movies and TV. In dissociative identity disorder, a person may have several personalities that share control of the personality. One personality usually dominates the other, and one or more of the personalities may be anti-social or evil. The books and movies, "The Three Faces of Eve" and "Sybil," are dramatizations of actual case histories of multiple personality. In addition, Kenneth Bianchi, the convicted and executed serial killer, claimed (probably falsely) to have multiple personalities. Also, dissociative identity disorder is often confused with schizophrenia, but it is not at all related to it.