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DEMYSTIFYING MULTIPLE PERSONALITY AND OTHER DISSOCIATIVE DISORDERS. A pioneering Hollywood film that illustrated multiple personality disorder, with the title character played by Joanne Woodward, was "The Three Faces of Eve." Ever since its release, psychiatrists and other mental health professioals began to take this affliction seriously, to describe it more clearly, and to attempt to treat it.

Later another film "Sibyl," about multiple personalities in one individual, was produced. Starring Sally Field in the title role, it vividly portrayed what the earlier movie glossed over - the kinds of horrible early traumas that produce
the splits in the developing personality and the devastating effects these several
unidimensional characters have on the patient and on relatives and friends. Not
to mention the disruptions these secondary selves, known as "alters," cause in the patient's relationships with classmates and co-workers. Nor the confusions they visit on the world at large exposed to externally inexplicable behaviors by someone who appears to be just one individual.

In fact, I learned of one eerie example of multiple personality disorder where the patient would get severe allergic asthmatic attacks when anywhere near horses. Asthma is a serious physiologic, immune system response where the bronchi (breathing tubes leading into the lungs) go into spasm, closing off the oxygen supply, risking respiratory arrest and death. But when a particular "alter" emerged, this other "self" was able to ride a horse with zero allergenic or asthmatic symptoms.

MULTIPLE PERSONALITY DISORDER is a baffling condition which obviously affects not only the psyche of the individual but also the physical self. The person suffering with multiple personalities, who can harbor well beyond 20 "alters," exhibits behaviors, albeit involuntarily, which seem to be of genuinely different individuals, especially when stressed. Sometimes these "alters" may be experienced as residing in the patient's head and speaking. Each alter is of a different age, gender, proclivities, speech styles and voice depth, talents and so forth. And some have amnesia relative to other alters, while the dominant Self can be amnestic, at unpredictable times, for what the other personalities do and say. Alters tend to emerge suddenly, without warning, interfering with the healthy intentions of the signal Self.

But Multiple Personality Disorder is just one of a group of psychiatric illnesses referred to as Dissociative Disorders.

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