Dissociative Identity Disorder in Women

Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) in Women An Annotated Bibliography Dissociative Identity Disorder is also known as “Multiple Personality Disorder”. This can be defined as an effect of severe trauma during early childhood, usually extreme, repetitive physical, sexual or emotional abuse. I chose this topic because I had to do a research paper about it in my Psychology class, so I just used the research I did to do this paper.
This was my first choice of a topic because it’s a psychological disorder that I have been fascinated with, since coming to America. Although there were times that I had to look for a topic that was much broader, such as, “disorders and women” in general in order to find anything reliable about my topic. By broadening my research to include the “disorders that relate to men and women”, I was able to write a paper with a much more effective argument. I initially started to do research using the Internet and looking for scholastic journals.
While this provided plenty of sources it was often difficult to determine if the information was reliable and half of the results were not relevant to my topic, like there were many times that I found myself looking through thousands of search results. Many of which were so irrelevant to my topic, like bulimia and anorexia, which are disorders but these are eating disorders, not psychological disorders. The most effective research method I found was going into EBSCOHOST and using the Academic Search Premier and Psychology databases, while trying a variety of search phrases.

This method helped me find many useful journals with information that I could use directly, or, by going to the reference section of the journal, would lead me to other sources. I used IUCAT to find the reference books and the encyclopedias for my paper, the reference books were much more useful than I expected, proving that women suffer from DID more than men. I assumed that all encyclopedias were filled with broad, general definitions, but I found several that had very specific information on my topic and also listed sources that I could use for further research.
I found several of the new research methods introduced during this course to be extremely helpful. I was surprised by how much of a difference changing a phrase or using Boolean Operators made at the beginning of a search. I hated the nesting search method, because it complicated everything and gave me millions of results, most of which were very irrelevant. I started out on the internet using the search phrase, “Dissociative Identity Disorder and women” which gave me plenty of results, but when I put limiters like Peer Reviewed Journals and Scholarly articles, I got fewer, more relevant articles.
When I replaced “and” with “or” I got much different articles. By isolating or deleting certain words in a search phrase I would get a completely new set of sources, and I was completely surprised at how little I knew about doing research in the library. The library turned out to be much more useful to me than the Internet since I did not have to spend nearly as much time verifying the reliability of a source or checking to see if the source was relevant.
I learnt that to judge the relevance of anything- a journal article, website, a book, we do so with the following criteria: The purpose of the article, Type of Journal, Coverage, Date of Article, Authority, Usefulness, Bias (of the publisher) and Organization and Content, and this was indeed the most important thing I learnt in this class. MLA Format Movies The Three Faces of Eve. Dir. Nunnally Johnson. Perf. Joanne Woodward, David Wayne and Lee J. Cobb. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, 1957. DVD.
I watched this movie in high school; it was about Eve White, who had 2 other personalities living in her. Whenever she is faced with different situations like fear, anger, happiness, sadness, a different personality would take over her actions. She was Eve White, a quiet, mousy, unassuming wife and mother who keeps suffering from headaches and occasional black outs. Eventually she is sent to see psychiatrist Dr. Luther, and, while under hypnosis, a whole new personality emerges: the racy, wild, fun-loving Eve Black. Under continued therapy, yet a third personality appears, the relatively stable Jane.
This film, based on the true-life case of a multiple personality, chronicles Dr. Luther’s attempts to reconcile the three faces of Eve. The movie really captures the frustration of a person with Dissociative Identity Disorder, because after each personality takes over, Eve White does not remember anything the other personalities said or did, so in the movie the therapist is trying to combine all 3 personalities back into 1 personality, so it was a very good visual representation of a woman with DID. Books Schreiber, Flora Rheta. Sybil. Chicago: Regnery, 1973. Print. I actually read this book and own it.
This book is a fictional story about Sybil Dorsett, a pseudonym for a real woman named Shirley Ardell Mason, who was originally in treatment for social anxiety and memory loss, but whom during the course of treatment, manifests 16 other personalities. Throughout the book, her psychoanalyst, Cornelia Wilbur, encourages Sybil’s various selves to communicate and reveal information about her life. It describes Sybil’s selves gradually becoming co-conscious, able to communicate and share responsibilities, and having musical compositions and art published under their various names.
Wilbur attempts to integrate Sybil’s various selves, first convincing them via hypnosis that they are all the same age, then encouraging them to merge. I included this in my research because at the book’s end, a new, optimistic self-called “The Blonde” emerges, facilitating Sybil’s final integration into a single, whole individual with full knowledge of her past and present life, which is the goal of every person with DID. Comer, Ronald J. Abnormal Psychology. 7th ed. New York: Worth, 2010. Print. I found this book through the IUCAT online library catalog using the search terms “Dissociative Identity Disorder and women”.
This is a book about different types of abnormal disorders. It offers a fresh, comprehensive, and exciting presentation of the field, with objective, balanced coverage of a wide range of theories, studies, disorders, and treatments and all major models. According to student reviews, “There has never been a text for the course so well-attuned to both the field of abnormal psychology and the wide range of students exploring it”. I liked this text because it presented the information in an unbiased manner.
It used a lot of case studies and current events to support the various psychological theories. Hyman, Jane Wegscheider. I Am More than One: How Women with Dissociative Identity Disorder Have Found Success in Life and Work. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2007. Print. I read this book in high school and also own it. In the book, I Am More Than One, Jane Hyman takes on and succeeds at a difficult task, one which few authors manage to accomplish: communicating to her readers the deep respect with which she holds the women she interviews, even though their experiences are so foreign to her.
It is clear from the beginning that Jane wants us to understand these women’s experiences from their own perspectives, without denying the clinical descriptions of their illness. The stories in this book are riveting; the women are sharply and almost affectionately drawn, but as much as possible Jane “gets out of the way” of her subjects. Most chapters focus on a theme such as work, family, or relationships, but all in all, my favorite part of the book is that the author treats all her subjects with the same respect and a sincere desire to understand a life lived with DID and pass that understanding on to the reader.
Reference book First, Michael, M. D. , ed. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: DSM-IV-TR. Vol. 4 Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association, 2000. Print. I found this source by using the IUCAT online library catalog and it was available in the reference section of the IUSB library. This book covers all mental health disorders for both children and adults. It also lists known causes of these disorders, statistics in terms of gender, age of onset, and prognosis as well as some research concerning the optimal treatment approaches.
In here, I discovered that, “Dissociative Identity Disorder is diagnosed 3 to 9 times more frequently in adult females than in adult males. Also, that females tend to have more identities than do males averaging 15 or more, whereas males average approximately 8 identities”, which did my topic a lot of justice. I liked this source a lot because some of the websites I had visited; had redirected me to this book as additional reference, and it was of great help. Government Publication United States. United States Courts. Court of Appeals. 6-3545 – United States v. Carol L. Gillmore. N. p. : n. p. , n. d. GPOaccess. Web. 8 Aug. 2012. <http://www. gpo. gov>. I found this publication by doing a search on GPOAccess. It is a court case about a woman who had DID, Carol Gillmore, who alleged at trial that her actions toward George Stately were a result of her DID causing her to experience a “red-out,” meaning that she entered into a dissociative state in which she suffered “a disruption . . . of consciousness, memory, identity and perception of [her] environment. She killed someone while in a state of amnesia with DID, so she is appealing her sentence because she claims she doesn’t remember killing George. I included this article because it is a life example of how the government handles people with DID. Journal articles Eric Eich, Dawn Macaulay, Richard J. Loewenstein and Patrice H. Dihle. “Memory, Amnesia, and Dissociative Identity Disorder”. Psychological Science 8. 6 (1997): 417-422. EBSCOhost. Web. 23 July 2012. I found this article during a search in EBSCOhost.
I found this article particularly interesting, because it explained a very common symptom of DID. It explained that virtually all patients with dissociative identity (or multiple personality) disorder manifest interpersonality amnesia, a situation where events experienced by a particular personality state or identity are retrievable or can be remembered by that same identity but not by a different one. That though it is considered as a hallmark of dissociative identity disorder (DID), inter-personality amnesia has to date being payed little to no attention.
I found this article interesting because I remember how Eve from the movie got frustrated with herself when she could not remember things that she herself had just done or said. Ennis, Mark William, and Pamela Pater-Ennis. “Sanctuary Healing: One Congregation’s Experience with Dissociative Identity Disorder. ” Journal of Religion & Abuse 7. 4 (2006): 19-39. EBSCOhost. Web. 23 July 2012. I found this article in EBSCOhost. This article looked at different religions and how they view people with DID. Specifically the Christian and how they did a sanctuary healing to try to heal a woman with DID.
The other personalities are seen as demons that have to be cast out of a person’s body. I found it as an interesting article, it was a very different view about DID, it’s good to be included in a research paper. Baker, Karen. “From “It’s Not Me” to “It Was Me, After All”: A Case Presentation of a Patient Diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder. ” Psychoanalytic Social Work 17. 2 (2010): 79-98. EBSCOhost. Web. 27 July 2012. I found this article in EBSCOhost. It sheds light on the fact that, in cases of extreme childhood trauma associated with abuse and neglect, one’s sense of self is seriously compromised.
Attachment patterns, symptoms, defensive operations, and character formation will differ depending upon the level of interference and impingement. That when repeated trauma occurs in early childhood, the dissociative response may become the first line of defense for the person to rely upon. This paper addresses the case of a woman diagnosed with DID. It describes the restoration of a unified sense of self from the eight parts of a dissociated and fragmented self in the course of therapy. The clinical case material presented is that of the child part of her, known as Lucy. Her treatment resulted in the integration of the ‘it’s not me! self to the patient’s knowledge that ‘it was me, after all. I like this article because it focuses on the child identity of an adult woman and what the child identity in the midst of adults has to go through, it was very interesting. Laddis A, Dell P. Dissociation and Psychosis in Dissociative Identity Disorder and Schizophrenia. Journal Of Trauma ; Dissociation July 2012; 13(4):397-413. Academic Search Premier. Web. July 17, 2012. I found this article using the Academic Search Premier in EBSCOhost. This is a case survey of people with DID versus those with schizophrenia.
Dissociative symptoms, first-rank symptoms of schizophrenia, and delusions were assessed in 40 schizophrenia patients and 40 dissociative identity disorder (DID) patients with the Multidimensional Inventory of Dissociation (MID). DID patients obtained significantly (a) higher dissociation scores; (b) higher passive-influence scores (first-rank symptoms); and (c) higher scores on scales that measure child voices, angry voices, persecutory voices, voices arguing, and voices commenting. Schizophrenia patients obtained significantly higher delusion scores than DID patients. It was an interesting article of how other disorders relate to DID.
Websites Johnson, Kimball. “Dissociative Identity Disorder (Multiple Personality Disorder): Signs, Symptoms, Treatment. ” WebMD. WebMD, 26 May 2012. Web. 10 Aug. 2012. ;http://www. webmd. com/mental-health/dissociative-identity-disorder-multiple-personality-disorder;. I found this website while doing a search on Google. I choose to include this article in my bibliography because WebMD has always had a very reliable name. The information they provide is unbiased and is simply there to inform and help the reader. The article includes everything you need to know about DID – from the symptoms, causes, and possible treatments. Grohol, John. Dissociative Identity Disorder Symptoms. ” PsychCentral, 9 July 2012. Web. 9 Aug. 2012. <http://psychcentral. com/disorders/sx18. htm>. I found this website while searching using Google. I included this website because the article goes into depth about the several different treatments of DID. These include Psychotherapy, Medications and Self Help. How effective each treatment type is, and it was determined that psychotherapy is the most effective way of treatment that gives way to “integration” of the personalities. There are some things included in this website that were not included on the WebMD website and vice versa.