Dissociative Disorders

Modified: 2026-08-02 10:00 AM CDST

Dissociative disorders involve problems in memory and personality integration.
- Dissociative amnesia, for example, occurs when a person is unable to recall important information after a traumatic event.
  - For example, Sirhan Sirhan, Robert Kennedy's convicted killer, claims that he has no memory of being in the same room with Kennedy.
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.
  - 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.