Multiple personality disorder, recently known as dissociative identity disorder, is when a person intermittently experiences two or more identities. While experiencing a new identity, a separate personality takes control, and the person is unable to remember important and personal information about him or herself. Each personality has its own personal history and identity and takes on a totally separate name. The "alters" are said to occur spontaneously and involuntarily, and function more or less independantly of each other. The unity of consciousness, by which we identify our selves, is said to be absent in MPD. Basically MPD is an innovative and highly individualist survival technique. It is the creative attempt of highly traumatized children to protect themselves from what's happening to them. When these children dissociate from the trauma, they become different personalities within one body. Only young children, around the age of eight and under have the flexibility and vulnerability to adapt to trauma by means of creating personalities. Each child is different; the abuse that causes one child to dissociate to the point of different personalities won't be the same for another child. MPD/DID and other dissociative disorders were once considered rare and mysterious psychiatric curiousities, but are now understood to be fairly common effects of severe trauma in early childhood, most typically extreme, repeated physical, sexual, and/or emotional abuse.
