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Multiple Personality Disorder

Little Linguist

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Please don't throw wikipedia articles at me - I was wondering in simple terms: What is multiple personality disorder? Does it mean that you have different personalities in your head in the Jungian sense? How does it differ from Schizophrenia?

Thanks for your help!

(My interest was sparked by a tangent in the popularity contest thread.)
 

Jack Flak

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It's not schizophrenia at all, that much I know.

I've never typed the different personalites of someone with MPD, so any notions I have are only guesses.
 

prplchknz

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schizophrenia from what i understand (which isn't much) not a split in/from personality, but rather a split from reality. of course it's alot more complicated then that, but damnit if you want to know about it you can use google or ask someone who actually knows something.

I don't know how you would type someone with mpd, I mean how do you figure which is their dominant personality and if their all about the same then which one was first? I don't know if you could accuratley type someone with MPD. I mean even people without MPD can be hard to type.
 
T

ThatGirl

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Multiple personality disorder is just a fancy word for mood swings, dont worry nothing to be afraid of.
 
T

ThatGirl

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People who have multiple personalities are scarry ass crazies who should be burnt at the stake or banned from the eath to rot in their sespools of decaying flesh!
 
T

ThatGirl

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I really feel strongly for those who suffer from MPD, I mean when you look at their lives and see the struggles and judgments they must face it is very sad.
 

placebo

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Wikipedia is the easiest way to get basic information about these things. And dare I say it, it's probably more reliable than most of us who know very little about MPD or schizophrenia unless we've had contact with it. Schizophrenia doesn't have to do with having multiple personalities. I think it's characterized by hallucinations and strange thinking/perception of reality. What I've heard about MPD is that it's really only diagnosed in America, so I have my own doubts of it being a real disorder. The people who tend to have it are I think women who were abused or something early on and needed a coping mechanism, so they created different 'personalities'.
 

Salomé

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Please don't throw wikipedia articles at me - I was wondering in simple terms: What is multiple personality disorder? Does it mean that you have different personalities in your head in the Jungian sense? How does it differ from Schizophrenia?

Thanks for your help!

(My interest was sparked by a tangent in the popularity contest thread.)

I'll say it again: You can't type the crazies.

MBTI is for people who are not suffering from psychopathology.

In Jung's typology, he indicated negative traits (hysteria, neuroses etc) which might associate more readily with one type than another, but didn't extend this to major personality disorders.

"Personality" in the MPD sense is more like a primitive, archetypal defense mechanism. It is thought to be due to severe traumatic experience during the early childhood years which leads to ego-disintegration.

Schizophrenia involves a 'splitting' of personality and psychotic episodes. It can have a biological and/or environmental cause.

The disorders are unrelated according to the literature.
 

nozflubber

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no no and no

Multiple personality disorder is the OLD term used for dissasociative identity disorder. Its no longer in clinical use, but it doesn't refer to the personality construct you're used to
 

Anja

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I know a few things about MPD and have actually met a few people who have that diagnosis. It's much more disabling than mood swings, though.

And, yes, they are sort of spooky. But it must be a lot worse for them than others around them. I think the personalities are sort of like Johari's window. Some of them know what others others know and some of them don't.

One place where I worked we had a resident with MPD. She'd leave to go to work at the rehab center in the morning wearing a skit and blouse and come home in the evening wearing slacks and a tee shirt. Apparently she had another life and place we didn't know about. One of her personalities would steal things which she'd deny having and then she'd find the item in her coat pocket and be asking who's property it was. Sometimes she seemed to be having (very animated) conversations with one of the other personalities. Sometimes she seemed like a normal person, though not necessarily in her original personality. It was difficult for her to answer questions pertaining to what was going on with her. I think she spent a lot of time in confusion and had learned well to confabulate to cope with/hide it.

I saw her walking far from home one day and stopped to give her a ride. She wouldn't come near the car. She narrowed her eyes and asked, "Do I know you?" Since she was so vulnerable I was glad to see that whichever personality was in charge at the moment at least it was remembering the safety rules she'd been taught.

You'll get a much better description of the disorder from something like Wiki. There's probably a description of the different types of personalities which may manifest and their various functions and connections. Among them are a rascal, a child, an infant, an organizer, the person themselves, sometimes a person of the opposite sex. More. Pets? Not sure.

I know that a goal of therapy initially was to integrate the personalities and that sometimes this is not possible. It is suggested in some cases that the damage has been so severe that the original person has been totally obliterated. I think new theories of treatment have been developed.

The degree of damage is not necessarily the issue as much as the strength of the original personality's coping skills and circumstantial factors. What may shatter one individual may not do so to another.

Did you guys know that Sybil, from the story, came from near here and attended Mankato State? I think it was a normal school then. Teaching teachers. The teacher she had there was the psychologist who treated her. It was about ten years back that all this was finally revealed when the characters' privacy was apparently no longer an issue.
 

Amira

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I am "Online friends" with a lady who has MPD and have read her "normal life" blog and her blog about her healing process for the last couple years. Occasionally I have also read other MPD blogs. This lady is an amazing person to be as healthy as she is after all she came through.

Some facts I've learned about the disorder:
True MPD starts before the age of 5 or 6, when a person has gone through such terrible abuse that they literally have to develop several personalities to handle it and survive. Abuse after that age will not cause the disorder.

The "alter personalities" can be any age and gender and some are grumpy, some rebellious, some nice and cheerful, some very timid...

People with the disorder can apparently, with training, develop pretty good control over which "alter" is allowed to be "in front" at any one time so as to have less awkwardness in daily life.


I have a lot of respect for people who live with the disorder and the memories of what caused it. Just getting by from day to day must be so tough.
 

Danielson

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Schizophrenia isn´t a personality disorder at all. It has nothing to do with a split personality, Jekyll and Mr Hyde..It is a malfunction of the brain metabolism, whereas MPD is caused by traumatic events. The only thing both illnesses have in common is that both patients hear voices.
 

The Ü™

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In a nutshell, where schizophrenia is a break from outer reality, dissociative identity disorder is a break from the self.
 

GargoylesLegacy

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Oh, I like this topic. I love to read about it and I actually know quite a bit about it myself. <-- loves psychology

to make it short and say it simple: Schizophrenia is when you have perceptual disorders; so for example you start to think that aliens watch you.
Multiple Personality Disorder is when you have multiple selves.

For both of those issues there is a positive and a negative form. And actually Schizophrenia is the most typed disorder. People often confuse it with the MPD.
 

ygolo

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Multiple personality disorder is just a fancy word for mood swings, dont worry nothing to be afraid of.

People who have multiple personalities are scarry ass crazies who should be burnt at the stake or banned from the eath to rot in their sespools of decaying flesh!

I really feel strongly for those who suffer from MPD, I mean when you look at their lives and see the struggles and judgments they must face it is very sad.

Ok, now I am just creeping myself out.

har. har. har.
 
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