The Cause

How DID is caused is still in question to know all the possibilities, but Helen Davidson, Jerome Kagan and Susan B. Gall have some idea. "Dissosciative identity disorders are thought to usually be caused when a person has a sever, repeated, traumatic experience during early childhood, such as severe physical or emotional abuse, sexual abuse, survives a natural disaster, war, kidnapping, torture, or other traumatic events."(Davidson, Kagan, and Gall) People that have DID may evolve another personality to kind of solve their problems, to make life a little easier on themselves rather than having all problems on one person. The DID patients might say they have been abused, but how will you really know if one of their personalities comes out and plays on the story? “…the inability of a patient to recall her family during childhood is a finding present in the approximately 10 percent if the nonclinical U.S. adult population classified as having a “dismissing” attachment. As far as we can tell by studies of attachment theory, these individuals were not abused. It is more likely that they grew up in emotionally distant homes, with little attunement or affective connection.”(Spira54) Some therapists and experts think the cause could be from abuse and others not. One day we might find a better, more sure answer but for now this is what we have. And hopefully they do find a different answer because nobody should have to go through any kind of abuse for any reason.

Sources:
"Dissociative Identity Disorder/Multiple Personality Disorder." Helen Davidson. The Gale Encyclopedia of Childhood and Adolescence. Ed. Jerome Kagan and Susan B. Gall. Online Edition. Detroit: Gale, 2007.

Spira, James L. Treating Dissociative Identity Disorder. San Francisco, California: Jossey-Bass Inc., Publishers, 1996.

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