Developmental Trauma
Causes of Dissociative Identity Disorder are wide and conflicting but one popular theory that is generally accepted in the field of medicine and psychology is that DID is a result of severe trauma such as rape, abuse, etc that one has experienced in the past. Dissociation becomes a coping mechanism for people whose memories of certain incidents are so harrowing that their brains respond by temporarily removing themselves from the situation. This results in a person becoming unaware of the abuses of the outside world/real life, as they are so disconnected from the situation itself. However, the validity of this belief has been questioned time and time again over the course of the years by multiple research data. Proponents …show more content…
It has been theorized that DID symptoms are therapist-induced, that is, they are the result of psychotherapists using means of "recovering" memories. An example of this is the use of hypnosis to gain access to the patient's alter personalities, delve into a the patient's childhood memories (age regression) or retrieve memories. This hypothesis is known as the "sociocognitive model" (SCM) and suggests that a person's DID originates from consciously or unconsciously behaving the way cultural stereotypes portray. This conscious/unconscious imitation of behavior is augmented by representations of DID in media and popular …show more content…
Professionals note that majority of DID itself is diagnosed by a small group of doctors. Psychologist Nicholas Spanos and others have proposed that DID may be the result of role-playing as opposed to alternate identities.
SCM is a popular hypothesis due to the small number of children diagnosed with DID, the sudden spikes in people diagnosed with DID after 1980, the lack of evidence of child abuse's increased rates, the arrival of alternate states almost completely only in people visiting psychotherapists, among others. These causes have cultural ties, as how DID is presented varies around the world. For instance, in India, patients only switch alters after sleeping for some time - which is how the disorder is actually depicted in the country.
Like all other psychological disorders, having a family member with DID can be a risk factor, increasing the likelihood of someone developing the disorder. This however does not translate into the condition being purely hereditary. DID also seems more prominent in frequency in women than woman, possibly due to higher rates of sexual abuse towards
Causes of Dissociative Identity Disorder are wide and conflicting but one popular theory that is generally accepted in the field of medicine and psychology is that DID is a result of severe trauma such as rape, abuse, etc that one has experienced in the past. Dissociation becomes a coping mechanism for people whose memories of certain incidents are so harrowing that their brains respond by temporarily removing themselves from the situation. This results in a person becoming unaware of the abuses of the outside world/real life, as they are so disconnected from the situation itself. However, the validity of this belief has been questioned time and time again over the course of the years by multiple research data. Proponents …show more content…
It has been theorized that DID symptoms are therapist-induced, that is, they are the result of psychotherapists using means of "recovering" memories. An example of this is the use of hypnosis to gain access to the patient's alter personalities, delve into a the patient's childhood memories (age regression) or retrieve memories. This hypothesis is known as the "sociocognitive model" (SCM) and suggests that a person's DID originates from consciously or unconsciously behaving the way cultural stereotypes portray. This conscious/unconscious imitation of behavior is augmented by representations of DID in media and popular …show more content…
Professionals note that majority of DID itself is diagnosed by a small group of doctors. Psychologist Nicholas Spanos and others have proposed that DID may be the result of role-playing as opposed to alternate identities.
SCM is a popular hypothesis due to the small number of children diagnosed with DID, the sudden spikes in people diagnosed with DID after 1980, the lack of evidence of child abuse's increased rates, the arrival of alternate states almost completely only in people visiting psychotherapists, among others. These causes have cultural ties, as how DID is presented varies around the world. For instance, in India, patients only switch alters after sleeping for some time - which is how the disorder is actually depicted in the country.
Like all other psychological disorders, having a family member with DID can be a risk factor, increasing the likelihood of someone developing the disorder. This however does not translate into the condition being purely hereditary. DID also seems more prominent in frequency in women than woman, possibly due to higher rates of sexual abuse towards