Hypnosis and Dissociative Disorders

Hello everyone,

Today in class we learned about Dissociative disorders. These are disorders where a person supposedly loses parts of their memory or consciousness causing them to lose part of their identity. (It's also referred to as the Multiple Personality Disorder.) At one point, we compared this disorder to hypnosis because like hypnosis, the person will be more susceptible to this disorder if they are more open to suggestion or fantasy. Otherwise, the person will probably not be affected by this. Hypnosis is thought to be more in the control of the person being hypnotized and, like I said, their willingness to give in. Both hypnosis and this disorder seem to be rejected and a little bit odd. This disorder has apparently been made up in more recent years by American psychologists because it is said to have really only been found among Americans and not others in other countries. After learning this and comparing it to hypnosis, it seems to be that people tend to over exaggerate these disorders. It seems a little bit vague to me.