Character Design Research- Multiple Personality Disorder

I have been watching video's of people with Multiple Personality Disorder, in order to get a clearer picture of how they behave/look. The changes can be so drastic, as far as being blind as one personality and have 20/20 vision as the other. The disorder seems to come about after an abusive childhood or traumatic event, where the person cannot mentally cope with the effects of the trauma and will split into different people, living in the same body. Sometimes this will often result in a child personality, where the person with the disorder cannot read nor write and will act exactly as a child.

Sometimes, the personality may wish to harm the beholder,  even cutting the body to injure the other personality. In the film, one lady refers to herself as 'she' and refer's to 'the body', with different people inside; sometimes she will not know where the body has been, or what it has done and asks people to force her other personalities to write a diary; each one has different hand writing. People can have up to a hundred different personalities.

The personalities come out at certain emotional points, whether they are aggravated, scared, worried, enthusiastic. Each personality is better at dealing with certain situations, so will come out when the person is feeling the corresponding emotion.

Although the person is exactly the same, when they switch between personalities their physical appearance can change drastically, simply through the use of different facial expressions, body language and language.

The main route to recovery is to release the traumatic memory that caused the personalities to split, however, the person will often form a personality that prevents this from happening, making threats to the therapist and often resulting in violence.

Animals can also react to personalities differently, in the documentary the dog had been trained to stay out of the room, when he switched to a child personality the dog sensed his master had gone and entered the room, when he switched back the dog recognised his presence and left the room.

Different personalities hold different memories and each personality has a different purpose.

Types of Personality

Emotionless

Destructive

Innocent (Child-like)

Abused (Scared)

Focused (Smart)