Fiction Writers

Multiple Personality Disorder

Writers have frequently employed the concept of Multiple Personality Disorder into their fiction.  According to experts, the disorder is not as common place as you might believe. The following notes were taken from BIO Channel documentary series: The Unexplained (Jan 2008).   

Those who suffer from Multiple Personality Disorder experience depression, memory loss and noticeable personality changes. The onset of Multiple Personalities usually occurs in childhood, but the expression of different personalities will happen later in life.  Personalities may emerge after years, frightening those who have known them as one person suddenly see a stranger. 

Gary awoke one morning and didn’t know his wife of six children.  Gary believed he was woman named Mary.  Gary was a hardworking husband and devoted father. When his daughter Chrissie died of pneumonia, his personality seemed to split. A second crisis, this time with his wife Kathryn, lost his precarious grip on his sanity.  Kathryn had no idea what to do to help and Gary left the family to live life as a woman. Left undiagnosed, Gary was known to his new friends as Mary.  Kathryn was ostricized by the small town community.  Gary retained a connection to the family, but he didn’t understand his place in the family, so he believed Kathryn was his sister. The family reunited as a fractured, dysfunctional unit, as Gary continued to live as a woman.  The arrangement, while devastating, probably would have continued indefinitely.  One morning Mary was knocked unconscious by a freak electrical accident, and when he awoke, Mary was gone.  Gary was acting as an infant.      

Gary sought help from a psychotherapist and presented as having Gender Identity Disorder.  Further examination showed memory gaps.  A person must have at least two distinct personalities to be diagnosed, so when the infant personality appeared, there was at least an answer. Gary was lost for 6 years, but one morning he woke up and was found.  His last memory as Gary was of the night Chrissie died. His children were grown and strangers to him.  He continues to switch between personalities with little warning.   

Multiple Personality Disorder occurs through disassociation, a protective response to traumatic experience.  All multiples have suffered repetitive childhood trauma.  Their lives are filled with fear, torment and despair.   Many people who suffer turn to drugs or alcohol to cope with the conflict.   

Valerie Durkin started experiencing blackouts and memory loss. Without notice a personality appeared and attempted suicide, taking an overdose of pills. She was diagnosed as a manic depressive and medicated. She was able to function in school, thriving in the structured environment, until her senor year, when her personality changed again.  She became suicidal again and told a friend she wanted to cut her stomach open. Her friend rushed her to the emergency room. Soon after she was diagnosed with Multiple Personality Disorder.  Valerie didn’t believe she had a disorder, so she insisted her sessions be taped as proof of what occurred.  Over the next year, fifty people came forward and described a horrific past of satanic rituals and torture. The memories were false, planted during hypnosis.  Once her therapist was able to uncover the true reasons for her disassociation, recovery was possible.    

Recovery depends on the therapist’s ability to distinguish between delusions and real traumatic events. Failure to do so will only worsen a patient’s condition.  There is hope for recovery, as demonstrated in the case of Chris Sizemore. Sizemore’s early childhood was marred with graphic, violent events that led to her disorder. Her personalities were organized in groups of three, the good, the bad and indifferent. The case is one of the most well known, inspiring the movie, The Three Faces of Eve.  Chris and her family lived with the constantly changing personalities until 1974, when Chris had a breakthrough.  She realized that be whole she had to take experience all the elements of herself and integrated the three personalities into one cohesive life.  Psychiatrists say the merging of several personalities into one is the most difficult part of recovery.  Some of the personalities may resist the process of integration, viewing it as death.  

The publication of Sybil in 1973 linked the condition to child abuse.  Sybil, a fictionalized character was based on the true case of Shirley Mason. However, critics believe she only expressed Multiple Personalities while in therapy.  Dr Herbert Spiegel felt Mason was highly suggestible and developed over 16 personalities at the urging of her therapist, Dr Cornelia Wilbur.   In 1980, Multiple Personality Disorder appeared in the Diagnostic Manual for American Psychiatric Association. Since 1973, nearly 40,000 Americans have been diagnosed.  There are still unanswered questions as to why some will develop the disorder and others will not.