Dissociative Disorders
By: Lauren Wake
This is a disorder in which a person experiences alterations in memory, identity, or consciousness. These disorders tend to be rare.
Dissociative Amnesia
This is the inability to recall important personal events or information. This is usually associated with stressful events. Amnesiacs remember how to speak and usually retain a fund of general knowledge, but they do not know who they are, where they live, or who their family is. Dissociative Amnesia often results from a traumatic event.
Dissociative Fugue
A dissociative disorder in which a person suddenly and unexpectedly travels away from home or work and is unable to recall the past. This is a sort of traveling amnesia, and it probably serves the same psychological function as dissociative amnesia, that is, escape from unbearable conflict or anxiety.
Dissociative Identity Disorder
A person exhibits two or more personality states, each with its own patterns of thinking and behaving. These different personality state may take control at different times. People with this disorder usually suffered severe physical, psychological, or sexual abuse during childhood. These people have learned to dissociate themselves from such stressful events by selectively forgetting them, thereby reducing the anxiety they feel.