Welcome to the Trauma and Dissociation project. We welcome and encourage editors to join with us in creating a wealth of information about the mental disorders caused by trauma.

The mask represents the normal face that traumatizedindividuals present to the world; behind the mask are the parts of the personalitywho struggle with one another.
The demons represent the shame and issues that can occur; the lightning strikes the attacks against the self. The train carries the healed toward paradise while the unhealed looks on, stuck in their nightmare setting.

Art by: Jeffsong Little was known in the 1970 s and 1980 s about the lingering effects of childhood abuse, but in years since, a great deal of research has been directed at this subject. Abusers, and go to great lengths to hide the emotional, physical and sexual abusethey enact upon children, but the fact remains that child abuseis common, and is truly a hideous and hidden epidemic of the human culture.

Also referred to as multiple personality disorder, a condition in which a person s identity dissociates, or fragments, creating additional, distinct identities that exist independently of each other within the same person. Persons suffering from dissociative identity disorder (DID) adopt one or more distinct identities which co-exist within one individual.
Each personality is distinct from the other in specific ways.

One study conducted in 1986 found that in 37 percent of patients, alters even demonstrated different from the host.
Statistically, sufferers of DID have an average of 15 identities. The disorder is far more common among females than males (as high as 9-to-1), and the usual age of onset is in early , generally by the age of four.

Both stories reveal fascinating insightsand raise thought-provoking questionsabout the unconscious mind, the interrelationship between remembering and forgetting, and the meaning of personality development.
The separate and distinct personalities manifested in these two cases feature unique physical traits and vocational interests. In the study of this disorder, scientists have been able to monitor unique patterns of brainwave activity for the unique multiple personalities.