Dissociation

In her biography Twenty-Two Faces Jenny Hill claims as a five year-old she was raped,

tortured, watched another child murdered and threatened with death if she told. Since

her mind was not allowed to process the stressful experiences and in order to cope, her thinking patterns separated into twenty-two multiple personalities who repressed the traumatic memories. As she grew up and when she was under stress these alters continued to “protect” her by frequently coming forth. Alter takeovers caused the young

woman to miss minuets, hours, days, sometimes even months of time, yet she had no idea as to why, or what happened.

Through Jenny’s case is an extreme example of Dissociation, the separation of thinking

patterns because of trauma is, unfortunately, not all that uncommon. Every year child

welfare agencies in the U.S. collect sufficient evidence to substantiate more than a

million instances of physical, sexual and emotional abuse. In the majority of cases this

maltreatment leads to the development of psychiatric problems. The most common for

children is Dissociation. The diagnosis is also apparent in 65% of the general population,

11% of whom require treatment, while up to 30% of those in therapy have undergone

physical, emotional and/or sexual abuse in childhood.

Dissociation is found in a variety of diagnoses. Just as Post Traumatic Stress is common

for veterans of war, children are the most likely to develop multiple personalities. Their

still-maturing brains and vulnerability, aka having little or no control over repetitive

abuse, is ripe for new neurons creation by the young brain that don’t connect during their

trauma, thinking patterns separate and memories automatically repress.

It was once thought that a severely dissociated mind such as Jenny endured was so

inflicted that the victim might never truly heal. However new research has found the

damage is amenable to reprogramming. The International Society for Study of Trauma

and Dissociation (ISSTD), a respected professional organization composed of hundreds

of psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers, promotes the latest in healing

techniques for Dissociation.

One of the most effective and newest healing protocols has been found to be Neurofeedback or Biofeedback therapy. “We don’t know why Neurofeedback works,”

says Linda Quinton-Burr, Ph.D., J.D. of the Trauma Research Center, a nonprofit therapy

center based in Utah. “We just know it does.”

The philosophy behind Neurofeedback is to train a person to control their own brainwave

patterns, wavelengths that tend to be abnormal in a person coming from severe abuse.

In 1994 a research team at McLean Hospital, Belmont Mass., sought to ascertain through use of electroencephalograms (EEGs), whether childhood physical, sexual or psychological abuse was clinically significant to brain-wave abnormalities. They

reviewed records of 115 child and adolescent admissions. Abnormalities were found

in only 27 percent of non-abused patients, while EEG anomalies were apparent in 54

percent of patients with a history of early trauma and common in 72 percent of those who

had documented histories of serious physical and sexual abuse.

This link between abuse and brain wavelength patterns was further confirmed three years

later in 1997 when Murray B. Stein of the University of California at San Diego also

found left hippocampal abnormalities in 21 adult women who had been sexually abused

as children. All were diagnosed with suffering from either Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

or Dissociative Identity Disorder.