Dissociative Identity Disorder is the newer name for multiple personality disorder.  If you saw "Three faces of Eve" then you have some idea of what we are talking about.  The disorder is different in each person and is  usually quite different from what is seen of Eve.  It is generally believed to be caused by some type of trauma or abuse, which usually occured in childhood.  The abuse was probably chronic, and either life threatening, or painful, or something that the child very much wanted to escape.  There are several ways to explain.  Each explanation tells a little, and answers a different question.

One explanation is that the child could not bear the pain and so dissociated or split to preserve the self.  In this model, I like to describe this as creating a boundary around the exposed and vulnerable self so that it is protected.  When that occurs, another self is present for the abuse.  At another time, this exposed self may then create a boundary.  What we end up with is many selves with boundaries between them.  The different personalities are separate from each other and may not even know each other.  The generally do not share information because there are dissocaitive boundaries between them. When abuse is occuring this may be useful.  Think of selecting a basketball or a marble in a large bowl of marbles.  In a bowl of marbles, the probability is lower that a particular marble is selected. More vulnerable selves can be preserved by being more internal, and also have a lower probability of selection.  They can be additionally protected in other ways.  

In this model, the process of therapy is to dissolve the boundaries between the different personalities and build the boundary between the outside world and the collection of personalities often called the system. This increased boundary between the outside world and the system can therefore better protect what is inside.  This is useful if the parts are able to communicate with each other, share information, and bettere identify when they need protection and how.  Often the child has survived by learning to ignore information that she/he is being hurt or abused or taken advantage of.  This ignoring of information means that she is not protecting herself.  This process is called integration.  If frightens many people with DID because they fear that the personalities will die or go away, and understandably they do not want to loose any part of themselves.

Dissociative identity disorder can also be thought of as along a continum of externalizing that which is feared.  This model is useful in understanding the variations of the disorder and is also useful when psychotic people and dissociative people are together, as in some hospitals or therapy groups.  Many times people with schizophrenia fear people with dissociative dissorders, and vice versa.  If you think of hearing voices, you can say the two have a lot in common.  The difference is that those with dissociative disorders would say that the voices come from inside the head, and those with schizophrenia will say that the voices come from outside the head.  This distinction however, is not always so clear because may people have had both kinds of experiences.  Additionally, sometimes it is difficult for them to tell where the voices are comming from.

If you think this is bizzare, remember how many times you have heard voices from your mother or aunt or others.  Additionally, are there not times when you cannot remember things that happened to you.  Additionally perhaps at other times, those forgotten events are perfectly clear.  One common example of a dissociated state is the drug induced state experienced by alcohol.  An intoxicated person cannot remember, when sober, what was done when intoxicated.  Let the sober berson become intoxicated again, and the memory returns.

It is also important to remember that all of us at times disown parts of ourselves.  As a child we experience many things.  It takes a lifetime to integrate a lifetime of experiences into one cohesive self that can know, and remember, and be acceptant of these events.  We want to be good, but we have done bad things.  One way some of us deal with it is to forget the bad we have done.  The process of integrating parts of self is lifelong for all of us, but some of us have an easier time than others.  

Regardless of the disorder, therapy is a process of understanding one's self and comming to terms with who one is.  It is a process of learning to trust one's intuition while using one's reason to determine the meaning of the experiences and intuitive information.  Therapy has componets of cognition, affect, behavior, and spirituality.  The cognition is reconstructed.  Narrative therapies, rational emotive therapy, and cognitive therapy focus on this part.  Therapy also has an important affective component. Gestalt therapy and many others focus on the affect.  Behavioral therapies emphasise the behavioral component, and as you might guess christian therapy attempts to emphasise the spiritual side.  

It is my belief that good therapy will find the appropriate balance between each of these components.  Good traditional mainstream therapy will have components of each.  As the cognitive is restructured and the affect accepted and processed, the behavior and spiritual components will also be reorganized.  Therapy for dissociative disorders as well as therapy for personality disorders is facilitated by such a reorganization of these internal structures.

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