Chapter 1. Dissociative Disorder in the Modern Era (9)

Dissociative symptoms often get out of sight



There is one thing that often puzzles clinicians working with DID patients. The patients’ dissociative problems sometimes disappear for a period of time and they no longer appear to be have DID conditions. Some personalities “get off the stage” for sometime, either spontaneously or due to some internal or external inhibition. I also say that these personalities “fall asleep” or “hibernate”, as some patients describe some of their personalities’ behaviors exactly this way. Still using another figurative expression, such as “switching”, these personalities often switch off on their own, or are switched off by other personalities for a period of time. The patients usually do not make any official announcement that some of their personalities are sleeping or switched off, and those who have daily contact the patients would notice the change and say, ”So you can make them go away like this. Was everything on purpose? Why didn’t you do that sooner.” Even some clinicians request or “demand” the patients that they no longer show their other personalities, so they “get better soon”. However, what the patients try to do in these situations is simply to adjust themselves to others, something that they have been doing so diligently since their childhood. So long as some of the personalities are pressured to go asleep or switch off, there is still a chance that in the future, once the pressure is removed , they might come out.


Then you might ask this question. “If some of the identities are prohibited from coming out, what would happen in the long run? Perhaps there is no one right answer as there are several possibilities. One is that some of the personalities would never wake up or switch on again for the rest of the patients’ life. Our lives have a period of time where dissociation can occur quite actively, until we reach a period of maturity and senescence, and dissociated personalities become inactive. Another possibility is that if they experience some emotional strain or trauma, some personalities wake up or get reactivated again. Otherwise totally different conditions can occur. They might get depressed, anxious, somatized, or exhibit any other types of psychopathology while some personalities are still dormant. These are the conditions that I would like to call “dissociative equivalent”.