A rare mental phenomenon known as "multiple personality disorder", unlike most diseases in this area, is of interest not only to psychiatrists.
The mysterious essence of this pathology attracts the attention of a huge number of people, and many books and films have been written on the topic of multiple personality disorder. Dissociative disorder - as this condition is called among doctors.
Of course, people with such deviations in the psyche met at all times, and if in ancient times such inappropriate behavior was attributed to the intrigues of demons, then as psychiatry developed, the true cause of this ailment was found. It turned out that the origins of a split personality sometimes originate at the moment a person is born or even before his birth, when the formation of a schizoid character takes place.
In the event that a child with such a risk factor grows up in unfavorable conditions (exposed to violence and bullying), then the stream of consciousness begins to change, and then either subpersonalities or personalities come to light.
Moreover, there is a significant difference between them: the subpersonality can obey the true "I" of a person, and the "I" itself is aware of the fact that someone else lives inside him. But with the personality it is more difficult - even if the “I” and knows that it is no longer the only one, then it is simply not able to influence the personality.
The separation of "I" into personalities is a kind of defense mechanism, when the child's psyche creates another "character" in response to a strong emotional shock. With the help of the created phantom personality, the child's true "I" forgets about the experienced mental trauma, and therefore when the second personality subsequently comes out, the real "I" does not remember anything about what the other half did.
The famous Paracelsus, who lived in the 16th century, described in his writings the case of a woman who was constantly losing money. As it turned out, she herself took and hid them, just to put it this way, in a different hypostasis, and when her real “I” returned, she did not remember anything about it. Of course, more often it happened that people suffering from a split personality did not go to doctors, but to the warm embrace of the Inquisition, which did not stand on ceremony with them.
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But already from the 18th century, doctors began to offer methods of treating bifurcation. Good results were achieved by the French physician Mesmer, who healed such patients with the help of animal magnetism. The doctor believed that every living object has some kind of energy that can be transferred to other objects by magnetization.
It is because of the incorrect distribution of animal magnetism (or fluid) that the body can malfunction - hence all diseases. To normalize the flow of animal magnetism, Mesmer used the technique of touch and magnetic passes, with the help of which the doctor's fluids were transferred to the patient. In those days, little was known about hypnosis, but it was this effect that Mesmer's sessions produced, which contributed to the revival of the forgotten ancient method of treatment - hypnosis.
Although cases of true multiple personality disorder are very rare, it is even rarer for patients who "contain" multiple "doubles". In 1915, an article by the American doctor Henry Prince, "The Doris Multiple Personality Case," was published, which described the case history of a girl named Doris Fisher, whose "I" contained five personalities at once.
The first of them appeared when a drunken father forcefully threw a three-year-old girl to the floor. It was then that "bad Margaret" came out, who is scolded and punished, subsequently three more were formed. In the end, Doris ended up in an asylum for the mentally ill.
Since it was not possible to cure her by traditional methods, the doctors decided that demons had infiltrated the girl, and therefore called for help from a medium who was able to unite all the girl's personalities into one whole "I" with the help of the same magnetism and hypnosis.
In 1887, the neighbors of a certain Mr. Brown, who had arrived a few months ago in the town of Norristown, were awakened by his screams. Poor Mr. Brown was running around in a state of extreme excitement and begging everyone to tell him where he was and what was happening to him. He refused to call himself Brown, claiming that he was a preacher named Bern, and he lived in Green, and he did not even know about this town!
In Norristown, Mr. Brown-Byrne was in the office trade. As it turned out, the preacher Bern really disappeared from Green, and his family was looking for him for two weeks. Professor James became interested in this incident, who persuaded Bern, who returned to the family, to conduct a hypnosis session over him, which did not end well.
After hypnosis, Bern became Brown again, did not recognize his wife and said that he had never heard of any Mr. Bern. The further fate of this man is not known.
An interesting case of multiple personality disorder was described at the beginning of the 20th century. The young Frenchwoman Felida united in completely different girls in character: one was cheerful and cheerful, the second was notorious and shy.
The transition of one personality to another was preceded by a fainting spell, after which one half of the “I” remembered absolutely nothing about the other. Once again, after such a transition, Felida discovered that she was in her ninth month of pregnancy.
Personalities (multiplets), into which the true "I" of a person is divided, in 75% of cases are felt by the subconscious as children under 12 years old, which is associated with traumatic factors in childhood. In half of the cases of people with multiple personality disorder, personalities take on the appearance of the opposite sex, and can also differ in nationality, have completely opposite views, abilities and skills. Often, individuals hate one another.
People with paranoid abilities, as well as mediums, shamans, etc., are able to independently immerse themselves in a state of trance, that is, they master the technique of self-hypnosis. In people with a split consciousness, this ability is also present, and among different cultures and regions these states even stand out.
For example, among the Eskimos, this is piblokto - a state of extreme excitement, accompanied by inappropriate human behavior, in which he shouts with the voices of animals, tears his clothes. Usually, after a seizure, the person does not remember anything.
But among the Malays, sudden bouts of rage are called amok - people who have fallen into this state are able to harm themselves and others, but later memories of this are not preserved. According to anthropologists L. K. Suryani and Gordon Jensen, the nature of personality splits can be massive.
For example, this is typical for shamanic cultures on the island of Bali, where the multiplicity of personalities in a person is a normal phenomenon, since people are sure that they are not a product of the subconscious of the person himself, but the infusion of souls or spirits into a person.
The most unusual case of personality split can be called the case history of William Stanley Mulligan, whose consciousness contained 24 mental subjects! Mulligan repeatedly committed crimes of varying severity, but the court was forced to acquit him, since it was possible to prove that the crimes were committed by a completely different person, albeit living in Mulligan.
Mulligan's personalities, who periodically broke free, were of different sexes, ages, nationalities, had varying degrees of intelligence and spoke different languages.
Cases of true split personality are quite rare, and over the past 80 years, only about 150 patients with such a diagnosis have been described. Spiritualists believe that it is the spirits or "demons" that occupy the human body that are to blame.
Psychiatrists are sure that the reason lies in a mental illness, in which the integral "I" is broken into fragments. Unfulfilled desires, suppressed ambitions can serve as an impetus for this.
Antagonistic traits often coexist in people: kindness and evil, good nature and aggression, optimism and pessimism. In the event of a breakdown of the psyche, all these traits are combined into separate personalities, and thus one person becomes the habitat of his mental unrealized counterparts.
It turns out that several people can have the same set of DNA, only in one body! This means that, under certain circumstances, from the same child, it is possible to grow people completely opposite in moral principles.
Modern psycho-coding specialists have techniques that allow them to "hook" several personalities into the subconscious of a person, with their own characters and memories.
Such zombie people can be programmed for a certain word - an anchor, after which a particular personality begins to dominate. And doesn't this mean that a person is just a biocomputer, which can be easily "rewritten" to execute a particular program.