Multiple personality disorder and the power of the mind to heal

Split personality disorder has been an enigma for psychologists and doctors for at least 100 years. It’s quite rare that a person can split their personality into at least 2 different people, and some even have 100 separate personalities, switching between them randomly. Each personality has its own uniqueness, name, and other traits, but none of the other personalities are aware of the others.

What’s even stranger, and psychologists are baffled by this, are the psychological and physiological changes that occur when a different personality takes over. For example… the physical scars on the body disappear and reappear in an instant with the domain of different personalities.

Let’s say, for example, that someone has two personalities… and for ease of understanding, we’ll call them “John” and “Peter”. If John is dominant and hurts himself, and the wound then becomes a scar…this would become part of who he is. So now, when Peter takes control and becomes dominant, the scar disappears… only to return when John takes control again.

The same goes for other ailments… allergies, diseases like diabetes, color blindness, lazy eye and even eye color have been observed to disappear completely or change when a different personality dominates. Intelligence is also affected. If John is fluent in French, Peter would not be able to speak a word of French.

Even tolerances to administered drugs are altered. If one part gets drunk and then a different personality takes over, that new dominant part will become totally sober.

Spiritualists and alternative therapists have propounded the notion that the body and mind are inextricably linked for a long time, but psychologists and doctors have not wanted to see this, to the detriment of their patients. But after seeing firsthand what happens with split personalities, they are beginning to understand the mind-body bond and what it means for humans and our power to heal ourselves and become the person we want to be.

“If the mind can do this by tearing apart body tissue, I think it suggests the same potential for healing,” said Dr. Braun, who runs a 10-bed psychiatric unit that uses psychotherapy, hypnosis and medication to treat people with multiple personal references. He said that he believed that the drastic physical changes seen in patients going from one personality to another could be duplicated in emotionally normal people under hypnosis… (source: New York Times).

Why do some people have split personalities?

This disorder often begins in childhood as a defense against long-term trauma, usually some type of physical or mental abuse. The theory is that the mind splits in two, so that it can withdraw to the other personality(s) in times of extreme distress…and allow the newly created part to take some of the burden of distress by sharing the pain. Another explanation, and this seems more likely… could be that the mind is creating an intact personality knowing that the original has been badly damaged… like when we partition a hard drive in case one part gets corrupted then we still have the other partition clean to work. And the reason that each part knows nothing about the other and the experiences of it, could be to protect it from the corruption and disorder of the abused part so that that newly created part works properly. If the new party had any memory or knowledge of the abuse the other party went through, it would also be damaged.

How do these dramatic physical changes occur?

If the mind and body are as closely linked as this suggests, then it would appear that a person’s memory, experiences, and beliefs are linked to every cell in the body, so that when the person’s personality changes all previous beliefs , etc. on are completely erased for the duration….thus, it changes the entire biology, molecular structure, cell structure, and chemistry of the body according to the new part.

So what does all this mean and how can it help us?

This is showing us how powerful the human mind is and that our bodies and their ailments, both mental and physical, are not permanent, but can be changed by the power of belief and thought. If we believe something without a doubt, surely we can affect our own bodies on a cellular level just as people with multiple personalities unconsciously do. We could just imagine that we are cured and it would happen, we could see in our mind that the cancer is gone, and it would be ready. Diseases of all kinds would be a thing of the past. All we need is the unshakable belief in our inner power…and the seemingly strange things that happen to people with multiple personalities should give us this belief.

There are many ways we can use this mental power. Through hypnosis we can access the subconscious to create new beliefs through visualization and other transformation techniques.

It is well known that hypnosis can create the same phenomena described in this article in emotionally normal people. Even without formal hypnosis, a person can learn powerful visualization techniques that, if vivid enough, can be very powerful. Visualization works because the mind cannot tell the difference between mental images and real images, so if we see something vividly enough and for long enough, the cellular structure of the body will begin to adapt to what is seen in the mind. Just as when a multiple personality takes over from a previous one, its cellular structure and mental state are modified according to the beliefs of the new part.

So… if you believe something so totally, it will become your truth. Read my other article on the power of belief to explore this idea further.

By Mark Turnbull