Dissociative Disorders

Modified: 2024-07-22 11:24 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.

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