Voluntary Switching Between Identities Dissociative Identity Disorder

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Recommended: Research paper on dissociative identity disorder

My article is titled: “Voluntary switching between identities in dissociative identity disorder: A functional MRI case study” and written by R.L. Savoy, B.B. Frederick, A.S. Keuroghilan and P.C. Wolk. The article is about Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), and it used to be called Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD). DID is when one person has multiple personalities, or alters, in one body. The alters are their own person, with their own characteristics, age and even gender. In this article, one participant had an adult, child and baby personality. This article presented research on what happens in the brain when a person switches to a different alter. Wolk, one of the authors, has been working with one patient, RV, for over 20 years (Savoy, R. L., et al, 2012, p. 1). RV, derived from the nickname research volunteer, has DID and she is actually able to voluntarily switch between alters. She had two other alters, a 4-6-year-old girl and a non-verbal baby (Savoy, R. L., et al, 2012, p. 2) To conduct this research and study her brain during switches, she was put into a fMRI. They did a few trail runs and preliminary testing to make sure she could switch in the environment such as the fMRI and to see if her head movements were only slight. During this, they found out that the baby alter would not be able to support her head, therefore, they decided to have RV only switch between her main personality and the child. They also found out that the average time it took for her to switch after they told her to switch, took four seconds (Savoy, R. L., et al, 2012, p. 2). After those, they conducted the real test. The researchers had a background image that all alters found pleasant that would display on a screen for ten seconds. Then, an ... ... middle of paper ... ...t typically tell cancer patients that they are faking it. I noticed, with further research after watching the TV show, that DID probably have to deal with it the most. In my opinion, I also believe the does a good job with showing the struggles of not only the person with DID, but everyone around them. I also think the show does a good job of showing how different the alters can be. One of them is a teenage girl, another is a man. One is very animalistic and one is a child. One of them is her abuser. Since if have seen United States of Tara, I wish the authors also went into more detail about RV’s different alters. We know the age and gender of the child, and the gender of RV, but that’s all we know. It would be interesting to know if the child and baby are RV from when she was younger or not. I think that would have added to the background knowledge of the research.

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