Multiple Personality Disorder

Multiple personality disorder (MPD) is a chronic and recurrent emotional illness. A person with MPD plays host to two or more personalities. Each identity has its own unique style of viewing and understanding the world and may have its own name. These distinct personalities periodically control that person's behavior as if several people were alternately sharing the same body. Because those diagnosed with multiple personality disorder often are not aware of the alternate personalities, called alters, inside themselves, they cannot account for blocks of time when these other identities control their memory, thinking, and behavior. In 1994 multiple personality disorder was renamed disassociative identity disorder by the American Psychiatric Association.