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Dissociative Identity Disorder Essay

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1. According to textual evidence, there are many reasons to doubt the validity of dissociative identity disorder (DID). Many cases of DID comes from self-report and and from therapists or researchers. As we learn from earlier chapters, one problem with self-reporting is that people may not be a very good reporter of their own experience. Some related mishap may be misinterpretation of questions asked, lies, giving favorable answers or favorable reports for the sake of preserving one’s appearance and/or appearances, etc., are just some of the disadvantage of self-reporting. Regarding observation from therapists and researchers, there exist the possibility of misinterpretation of client’s DID signs, which may even lead them to play a part in the creation of an alter identity during the course of treatment. One of the hardest question to answer about DID is whether or not the recovered memories are real or fake. Believers of the sociocognitive theory claims that patients with DID adopt the …show more content…
The amount of experimental studies about DID are limited, and few can support the diagnosis of DID. A study completed by Putnam (1984) found that the EEG activity (brain wave activity) in patients with DID were indeed different from one identity to the next. This means that if there exist only one identity, it shouldn’t be possible to have a different brain wave activity. A different study was done by Reinders and colleagues (2006) which examined cardiovascular reactivity to both neutral and traumatic memories to different alters. A neutral memory was shown to both the neutral id and the traumatic id, but neither of the heart’s response was anything significant. But when shown a traumatizing memory, the traumatic id showed significant emotional distress but not the neutral id. This result lead to the supposition that a certain alter may be created to protect the person from a traumatic memory, so that they can go on living their life without the horror of the

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