Dissociative Disorders
The common link behind all the dissociative disorders is a little more difficult to grasp. Basically there is some sort of a break or disruption in the conscious process. Think of it as a divider that goes up in someone’s mind, so what was once one, is now fragmented. You can think of it kind of as a split in the mind now does the picture above make sense).
There are three dissociative disorders you must know for the AP, psychogenic amnesia, fugue, and dissociative identity disorder.
Psychogenic amnesia:
Psychogenic amnesia is when a person cannot remember things and there is no physiological (bodily) basis for their forgetting.
If I smack you in the head and you forget your name, that is called organic amnesia (not psychogenic) – because there is a physical reason for your forgetting. There are basically two types of organic amnesia–
- Retrograde amnesia – cannot remember things that occurred before the hit on the head
- Anterograde amnesia – have trouble forming new memories since the accident occurred. These people can remember everything that happened BEFORE getting hit on the head, but cannot put together any new information for long time storage.
There are two popular movies that talk about anterograde amnesia. 50 first dates, where Drew Barrymore had an accident and lives the day before the accident everyday for the rest of her life. Adam Sandler tries to date her, but even months after they met, she wakes up every morning not knowing who the heck he is.
Maybe an even cooler movie that focuses on anterograde amnesia is Memento. In Memento, the main character is injured when his wife was murdered. He attempts to find the killer, but has anterograde amnesia. So he forgets the information he uncovers about the crime the next day. Everyday he must relearn everything that has happened since the murder. He solves this problem of forgetting by tattooing messages on his body.
Now Psychogenic Amnesia is when you forget information usually because of some stressful event. Because it is psychological and not physical, this type of amnesia can range from forgetting one summer in your childhood (maybe when abuse occurred) to forgetting a specific person or object (like your dog after watching him get hit by a car in front of you).
Dissociative Fugue
This just might be my favorite disorder. People with fugue not only forget who they are (psychogenic amnesia) but usually find themselves in a strange place with no idea how they got there.
There have been cases of fugue where men have left their families, moved hundreds of miles away, started new families, claiming only to remember the old families years later (do you buy it?). The claim is that the psychological stress in their lives, forces the mind to spilt from their current reality- they forget who they are and just wander off. Last year I had a kid cut class and he claimed fugue.
Dissociative identity disorder (DID)
Perhaps the most misunderstood disorder, Dissociative Identity Disorder used to be know as multiple personality disorder.
This is where a person has several distinct personalities rather than one integrated personality. There is no limit to the amount of personalities the person can have- and they are not limited to a specific gender of age.
People with DID commonly have a history of sexual abuse or other terrible childhood trauma. The theory is that they create these other personalities to cope with the abuse when they are not able to. Since the abuse occurs early on in one’s life, many of the personalities are childlike in nature- and there is some debate as to whether the other personalities grow alongside the main one.