ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the personality organization of highly dissociative individuals as well as the dissociative organization of our culture. Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) generally starts at a young age, usually by the age of five, and rarely beyond the age of nine or ten. The problem is that dissociative responses—such as switching, blanking out, or going into a trance—become automatic, and, once the original abusive environment has been left behind, are of little use in life and may be detrimental. A traumatically abused and terrified child may deal with overwhelming affect and pain by distancing herself from the experience to such a degree that she dis-identifies with the experience and becomes an observer of the event. Like most severely dissociative people, Yolanda's system of alters mirrors the violent, dominant–subordinate, and neglectful family system in which she grew up. The Oedipus story that Freud presented left out much of its original context in child sexual abuse.
