In this week's AP Psychology class, we began our unit on personality, an individual’s characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting. Today’s personality researchers study the basic dimensions of personality, the biological roots of these basic dimensions, and the interactions of people and environments. They also study self-esteem, self-serving bias, cultural influences on one’s sense of self, and the unconscious mind.
So far, we have discussed the theories outlining the trait perspective, which maintains that personality is rooted in traits, or how they typically act (characteristic behaviors) and conscious motives. Within this perspective lies Hans Eysenck's "super trait" theory, which argues that there are two overarching enormous super traits/categories: stable to unstable and extroverted to introverted. Many personality traits are related to whether you're mainly introverted or extroverted and whether you tend to be emotionally stable or unstable (highly emotional). These characteristics, in turn, are related to four basic types of temperament first recognized by the early Greeks. These four basic dispositions are: melancholic, choleric, phlegmatic, and sanguine. Everything else can be condensed into these four traits.
Next, comes Gordon Allport's common traits (characteristics shared by most members of a culture) and individual traits (which defines a person's unique personal qualities). Within an individual, there are cardinal traits, central traits, and secondary traits. Then, we learned about Raymond Cattell's factor analysis and the ensuing 16 Personality Factor personality trait [list], which described these traits on a continuum. Finally, we learned about the Five Factor Theory, which includes five basic traits under which all other aspects of personality fall.
As we were learning these trait perspectives, I decided I wanted to research more into Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), commonly referred to as multiple personality disorder. DID is a dissociative disorder consisting of a disruption of identity in which two or more separate and discreet personality states (or identities) take control of an individual's behavior at different times. When under the "direction" of one identity, a person is generally unable to recall some of the events that occurred while other personalities were in control. The different identities, known as alters, may affect speech, mannerisms, attitudes, thoughts and gender orientation in each setting. The alters can even exhibit physical differences, such as allergies, right-or-left handedness or the necessity for a eyeglasses prescriptions.
A person with DID can have as little as two alters or as many as 100. The average number is usually 10. Frequently, the alters are stable over time, continuing to play distinct roles over the course of a person's life. Some alters may shield aggressive tendencies/natures, directed toward others in the person's environment or alters within the person. At the time a person living with DID first seeks professional help, he or she is typically unaware of their condition. Many complain of incidents of amnesia, or time loss, and claim to not be able to remember events that occurred in the previous time period, or meeting unfamiliar people who assert that they know them.
Interestingly enough, hypnosis is the primary treatment for DID. The therapist attempts to contact as many alters he/she can and try to discover their roles and responsibilities in an individual's life. Specifically, the therapist targets the alters with aggressive capabilities and tries to harbor this behavior. The therapist strives to make connections among the personalities and explore those that include fragments of traumatic events in an individual's past. The objective of this hypnosis is to facilitate the breakdown of the identities and "unify" them into a single identity.
For your reading pleasure, the link to the article is below:
http://www.nami.org/Template.cfm?Section=By_Illness&Template=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=165620
This is such an interesting topic! Funnily enough, in an episode of "Drop Dead Diva," a show about a woman who dies and comes back to life as a "heavier" lawyer, the main character has to deal with a case where a woman claims that her husband's psychologist caused him to become a completely different person. Apparently, he used to switch back and forth between two different personalities, and his psychologist got rid of the one that his wife actually liked. In the end there was a whole scandal, but now I understand the science behind it! Fun stuff!
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