People develop different personalities due to past traumas

Hi Everyone,

This is my first post on Blogger, along with several other posts I've created on LinkedIn and Instagram.

In this content, my major focus is on Dissociative Identity Disorder, where people may develop different personalities due to past traumas in their life.

One such example is Ms. Yamini. She was very quiet most of the time, barely speaking or smiling. People around her often said she was boring.

One day, Yamini started crying uncontrollably and felt scared most of the time. Her parents became alarmed and took her to Dr. Pierre, a renowned psychologist.

Mr. Pierre was an expert in treating conditions like hysteria, but Yamini’s symptoms were different. She exhibited three distinct personalities.

Version 1 Personality:

In this state, Yamini remembered only certain things before suddenly switching to Personality 2.

Version 2 Personality:

Here, she had a completely different personality.

Version 3 Personality:

In this version, Yamini remembered things that her other two personalities did not.

Mr. Pierre took it as a challenge and hypnotised Yamini. During hypnosis, he discovered that Version 3 of her personality remembered a frightening incident from her childhood. She had encountered two men hiding behind a curtain while on vacation.

This memory terrified her so much that it stayed deeply buried in her mind. 

Her other personalities didn’t remember this event, but it was still there, causing Yamini to feel scared without knowing why.

Dr. Pierre called this process "dissociation," where parts of the mind break off from a person’s conscious awareness, leading to strange feelings or behaviours.

He realised that traumatic events like Yamini’s childhood fear could get trapped in a hidden part of the mind, which he called the subconscious.

This subconscious could cause people to feel emotions, such as fear, without them understanding why. 

Dr. Pierre also noticed that when Yamini felt afraid, her body showed signs of terror too. As he put it, “The unconscious is having its dream,” making the body react to the trauma stored in the mind.

Though Dr. Pierre’s work was groundbreaking, another famous doctor, Sigmund Freud, had a slightly different view. Freud didn’t like the term "subconscious," finding it too vague. He called it the "unconscious" and explained that dissociation was a way for the mind to protect itself, like a shield, from painful memories.

- Vivek

02/10/2024