Multiple Personality Disorder (Mpd)

Multiple Personality Disorder (or MPD)

I. Introduction

A. When you were growing up, did you have an imaginary friend? Did Mom and Dad have to set a place for Timmy at the table and serve him invisible food? In this kind of situations, child might be doing this to have a fun and child might be pretending that they are someone else. But what if this were an adult and convince us that they are someone else. If this were to happen, society would label them as crazy person. Or, maybe, this adult is suffering from a Multiple Personality Disorder.

B. Multiple Personality Disorder (or MPD) is a psychological disorder where a person tend to have more than one developed personality. These personalities have their own way of thinking, feeling, and acting that may be completely different from what another personality is like. Basically, a victim become another person in either an extreme or complete way.

C. MPD is rare disorder and for psychiatrist it is still very hard to find what exactly causes this disorder.

D. Today, first we will briefly look at what is MPD and what exactly happens in MPD, and secondly the major cause of it.

II. Body

A What is MPD

1. According to http://www.sidran.org/didbr.html-- MPD was first recognized in the late nineteenth century by Pierre Janet, a French physician. The disorder was later brought more to public awareness by The Three Faces of Eve (1957), a movie based on the true story of a housewife who was diagnosed with MPD when she couldn't explain why she would suddenly become a very sexual person and not remembering anything at all. After the movie, people became more aware of MPD.

2. MPD is also known as Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) in the psychiatric world. The reason for this label is that the term "multiple personalities" can be misleading sometimes.

3. When person is going through MPD, they may discover objects, productions, or handwriting that they cannot recognize.

4. They may refer to themselves in the first person plural (we) or in the third person (he, she, they).

5.Also, They may have blackout for events that occurred between their mid-childhood and early youth age.

6. According to Spanos, Nicholas author of book Multiple Identities and False Memories, there have been as many as 20 personalities [perhaps even 37] that have been reported. About 1% of the population has some form of MPD. In fact, of patients in psychiatric hospitals, possibly up to 20% have MPD but are misdiagnosed.

Now, the question is what causes this MPD? Well, The exact cause of MPD as well as its relationship to other mental disorder is still a subject of debate for Psychiatrist. But they did come with the major cause.