Dissociative Amnesia Theory

Dealing with two-faced people is challenging and frustrating but this is the life of the friends and relatives of Dissociative Identity Disorder patients. In fact, they might need to deal with multiple personalities in the span of just a few days (Nevid, Rathus & Rathus, 2010). One moment they are your friends, the next one you do not even know who they are. Imagine making an important plan the previous day only for your friend to wake up with no memory of ever being your friend at all due to temporary memory loss – also known as, dissociative amnesia. Nevertheless, Dissociative identity disorder (DID) has been studied less frequently than other disorders and neglected in healthcare, yet it provides an alternative framework that can be used
Sullivan developed a social theory by the assessment of his childhood experiences. Growing up as a lonely child compromised the social nature of Sullivan because he was less interactive in school, the workplace and the society (Evans III, 2006). It is this experience that led Sullivan to conclude that people's immediate reactions are responses to the situations they find themselves in. To add, the strongest reactions are those influenced by childhood experiences (Enfield, 1999). These theoretical perspectives provide outline principles that can be used to envision the occurrence of Dissociative Identity Disorder. They also outline the basis for understanding how severe and repetitive childhood trauma experiences can cause DID. Lewis-Hall et al. (2002) explained that females are likely to experience increased cases of DID than men because they are likely to be abused sexually, physically and emotionally when young compared to
Roberts and Watkins (2009) provided some examples of DID, including memory distortion and lapses, unrecalled behaviors, inability to recognize other people, having possessions with no acquisition knowledge, and hearing voices among others. When a person with DID forms alters – different personalities – they could differ in several ways such as: age, ethnic background, accents, vocabulary, headaches, allergies, drug reactions, menstrual cycles, handedness and even gender (Dick Day Lecture, 2015). In addition to all these differences, each alter has a different psychological problem that needs to be treated than the host itself. Presently, the most common treatment of DID is clinical hypnosis. However, as mentioned by many clinicians, hypnosis could actually result in DID due to the suggestion of a psychologist who could influence the individual to create another