Trauma, Multiple Personalities and Post Traumatic Stress
Does Trauma Cause Multiple Personalities in Children and Post Traumatic Stress in Adults?
Judy Byington, M.S.W., L.C.S.W., ret., Author, Twenty-Two Faces
Repressed mind and body memories so severe they create various thinking patterns in children was referred to as Multiple Personality Disorder until 1994 when the American Psychiatric Association renamed it Dissociate Identity Disorder, (DID). In that same year the official psychiatric diagnosis manual (DSM-IV 300.14) explained the disorder as “An ability of the mind to disconnect from stressful situations by repressing unwanted memories into the subconscious.”
To perfect his mind-control programs during World War II, Adolf Hitler studied in liaison with Englishman Aleister Crowley, a keeper of “Hidden Knowledge” of the perverted ancient Mystery Religions which traced worship back through generations to a great Master Mahan. The Hebrew word for Maha meant: “to destroy,” or with the “n” added: “Mind Destroyer.” The word was possibly related to an Arabic word-counterpart meaning: “Keeper of a Great Secret.”
Doctors of the Third Reich were ordered to fine-tune their vile machinations by demonizing prisoners selected from concentration camps. Their human experimentation consisted of sexual, physical and mental abuse which is now known to fracture thinking patterns. It was later found that exposure to repeated trauma produced adrenaline in the victim which in turn created more neurons or thinking patterns. This could explain how dissociation or multiple personalities might occur if repetitive traumatic episodes interfered with electrical connections between the mind’s neuron systems to repress the unwanted abusive memory, plus the resultant production of adrenaline created additional thinking patterns or multiple personalities, resulting in a child who was ripe for Dissociate experiences. (272 words)
The rise of the Dissociate Identity Disorder Diagnosis Release of a multiple personality biography in 1973, Sybil (Henry Regnery) uncovered the connection between child abuse, trauma and formation of alter personalities but it was after the Vietnam War in 1980 before one dissociate disorder, Post Traumatic Stress, was finally recognized as a diagnosis. Since ancient times warriors, prisoners and veterans of war expressed this same type of rage, grief and flashbacks to repressed memory as has been observed in PTSD clients. Once described as “shell shock” or “combat fatigue” this fractured thinking is also seen in survivors of concentration camps, car accidents and other disasters, including those caught in the New York 9/11 attack.
Also by 1980, Michelle Remembers (St. Martin’s Press) suggested that repeated severe abuse created multiple personalities in children. Michelle Remembers, along with a comprehensive history of satanic practices, Cult and Ritual Abuse ( James Noblitt, M.D. and Pamela Sue Perskins, L.C.S.W, 1980) were credited with significantly elevating public awareness about the extremely secretive activities of cults that engage in ritualized abuse to traumatize their own youth. Their methods were eventually known as mind-control and named Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA).
After these 1980 book releases there was an explosion of clients categorizing themselves as SRA survivors suffering multiple personalities or dissociation, who were confessing eerily similar claims to mental health professionals. Within three years a group of social workers, psychologists and psychiatrists met in New York to organize treatment techniques for a large population of clients diagnosed with PTSD or Multiple Personality Disorder. The next year, 1984, the first meeting of the International Society for Study of Trauma and Dissociation (ISSTD) was held in Chicago. A year later another professional organization was founded: the International Society for Traumatic Studies (ISTSS). By 1988 ISTSS convened a European conference in Lincoln (United Kingdom) and in 1992, formed the first global conference in Amsterdam (The Netherlands).