Research Paper Sample: Exploring Notable Changes in Dissociative Personality Disorder

When the question of human psychology come into context, there is no doubt that we as human beings are fragile. Over the years, there have been numerous incidents of psychological disorders, but one remains something of misery, and at the same time, completely fascinating to the medics is a dissociative personality disorder. This is a health condition whereby an individual is fragmented into two or more different personality attributes. Those with the rare condition are often victims of severe abuse in the society (Ross & Ross, 2006). The idea of moving like a "zombie" and not knowing what happened is often scary, but the truth of the situation is that it does serve a purpose. The human psyche is often fragile and just like any other living will attempt to preserve. Through the experience to live normally, a person's psyche dissociates from experiences to allow the person live more "normal" life. For instance, an individual who was sexually abused during childhood by a swim coach may feel nauseous at the smell of chlorine. For an individual with dissociative personality disorder, a hint of chlorine smell may lead to dissociation to prevent them from remembering those childhood experiences. The situation essentially makes people to loose memory that goes beyond the ordinary forgetfulness and displays a range of attributes such as fear and mood disturbance. New medical cases in dissociative personality disorder have led to notable changes related to the imagination, but the researchers in the psychological fraternity believe that they only represent the end of the normal scale only. This paper, therefore, seeks to explore to analyze the existing literature and make a comparison of various studies in line with the study topic.

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Comparison and analysis of the literature in the articles collected

According to an article by Eich et al.(1997) on memory, amnesia and Dissociate Identity Disorder, patients with the condition often manifest interpersonal amnesia and events experienced during a specific state or identity can be retrieved through the same identity but not through any different one. Even though it is considered a hallmark in an effort to dealing with Dissociative identity, the existing interpersonally forgetfulness has attracted significantly lower empirical attention. At the same time, there is only a few research conducted with just 1 patient and a single index preservation. In contradiction, the article has focused on an experiment that involves 9 patients and different measures of either the implicit or the explicit memory. The results of the entire test reveal that implicit test to persons with a dissociative personality disorder is important but not enough for the demonstrating transfer of information from an identity to another. Specifics are noted when priming in word-stem completion happened when similar personality state performed during the study and the test. Priming in picture fragmented completion came out to be almost similar between identities since it was within the same identity.

In another article by Austrian (2005), anxiety is often normal in any human and it is appropriate in scenarios that are new, includes performance and is unpleasant while at the same time unavoidable. Anxiety is anticipatory and involves consciousness or unconscious threat to an individual's life or emotional constancy. It can be anticipated or experienced without warning with its sources either known or elusive. The article further states that anxiety can be annoying and is a normal emotion that can be dealt with. In regards to moods disorder, a significant number of people experience clinical depression which is part of the main depressive disorder, cyclothymia, and dysthymia. Mood depression has led to a total loss of about $44 billion in productive time and more than $31 billion lost as a result of illness amongst people without depression. Another form of the disorder is the somatoform and the fictitious disorders which involve the relationship between the mind and the body. Often people experience "aches and pain" that have no apparent organic cause and also experiences physical symptoms while being aware of the prevailing feeling of anxiety. On a weekly basis, about 80 percent of healthy people experience somatic symptoms which range from primary, temporary symptoms like mild headaches, back pain, and extremely distressing symptoms. The dissociative disorders according to the article involves the moments of dissociation. There exists a range of dissociative experiences ranging from those experienced by everyone to harsher dissociative identity disorder. This has been a controversial mental disorder among all other disorders and has been subjected to powerful skepticism from all corners. This literature has ranged from passionate discourses identifying the real psychiatric disorder to a more passionate claim.

One major issue that has hindered the progress of psychiatry is differential diagnosis specifically when a possibility of borderline personality pathology comes into context (Kernberg, 1986). This borderline situation needs to be differentiated from the neuroses and neurotic attitude pathology on one side and psychoses and major disorders. Both descriptive approach and the generic approach have significant value more specifically with the major effective disorder. Subsequently, according to the article, the older literature regarding identity disturbance in adolescence and diffusion are not differentiated. In this case, one can still find fundamental questions raised whether adolescent might present some degree of identity diffusion and be distinguishable from further borderline personality organization. From a sociological context, the society can be indicated for condemning a significant majority of the aged to poverty, uncomfortable dwellings and solitude then spell the possibilities for old age. These possibilities are often problematic because of various reasons which are related to quantitative and semantic. Behind the semantic lies a different conceptual, ideological and clinical problem such as the wish to remove the term psychoneuroses from classification system.

Comparison of the limitations of the studies collected

Due to the historical developments such as the increasing technological development, technological advancement, and comparative research, comparative approaches in social sciences have received significant dominance. From the studies, limitations range from the formulation of the research aims and objectives, mode of data collection method, the implementation of data which is collected and the scope of discussion applied by the researchers. Another scope of limitation has been attached to cultural and other forms of bias during the study and in the process of data analysis (Kluft, 2013). According to the literature collected, the research aims and objectives are to some degree too broad. In the first article, the researcher has stated that interpersonal amnesia occurs only in specific state or identity. The second article again is broad in the sense that the situation can be anticipated without warning with the source either known or elusive. Secondly, there choice of data used in the studies poses some limitation in the research process which, to some degree hindered the realization of the research objectives. Furthermore, the implementation of the collected data and the scope of discussion have posed a significant limitation to the improvement of dissociative personality disorder.

Conclusion

There exist significant changes in psychology, and there is no doubt that human is fragile. Dissociative Personality Disorder is one of the psychological conditions whereby an individual is fragmented into two personality characters. With the contemporary changes in the technology and work life experience, there are indeed variations in the types of personality disorders currently witnessed across various patients. The contemporary situation makes those involved with the situation loose memory that goes beyond the normal and shows a range of varied characters related to fear and mood disturbance. At the same time, this has made medical progress towards the realization of the solution to the problem more complex as expected. At the same time, research has been conducted from varied angles regarding the situation with the aim of understanding other forms of psychological disorders related to dissociative personality disorder. This research is expected to provide specific goals and objective that will help narrow the level of focus of the study. At the same time, additional choice of data collection will be integrated to increase the scope and the depth of analysis. In regards to implementation and scope of the discussion of the collected data in the future studies, it is expected that extensive experience be used in the primary data collection process to nature the data collected.

References

Austrian, S. (2005). Dissociative Disorders. In Mental Disorders, Medications, and Clinical Social Work (pp. 72-89). NEW YORK: Columbia University Press. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7312/aust13516.9

Eich, E., Macaulay, D., Loewenstein, R., & Dihle, P. (1997). Memory, Amnesia, and Dissociative Identity Disorder. Psychological Science, 8(6), 417-422. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/40063227

Kernberg, O. (1986). Personality Disorders in Old Age. In Severe Personality Disorders: Psychotherapeutic Strategies (pp. 68-76). Yale University Press. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt32bf53.8

Kluft, R. P. (2013). Clinical perspectives on multiple personality disorder. Washington, DC u.a: American Psychiatric Press.

Ross, C. A., & Ross, C. A. (2006). Dissociative identity disorder: Diagnosis, clinical features, and treatment of multiple personality. New York: Wiley.