I would like to know people’s take on dissociative disorders. Anything is welcome, I’d just like to see where people stand. This subject has always fascinated me and made me question a lot of things. If you don’t know, a dissociative disorder is a mental disorder in which the mind actually tricks itself into compartmentalizing a lot of memories and emotions as a coping mechanism. The mind will create separate personalities with different views, morals, and standards for the way they operate. This used to be called Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD). Correct me if I’m wrong, this is only my understanding of it.
Just a while ago I was thinking what might be the next step in the evolution of human consciousness and I was thinking that it could be something along these lines. If it cannot evolve any higher, such as becoming some sort of superconsciousness, then it could simply split and differentiate and become complex. So, instead of "I’, there could evolve multiple “I’s” and potentially make thinking process more efficient, so a person could potentially think of two things or more at the same time. 
My take is this:
MPD is more prevalent than we realise and, moreover, in people who are considered healthy i.e. not diagnosed as having any mental disorder. Take authors of novels. They often talk about ‘becoming’ the main character of their about to be written novel. They experience life through the ‘eyes’ of their character. They cultivate that technique, in fact. That is not a writing technique - it is, in fact, dissociative disorder, but not recognised as such.
Pandora:
I’ve never thought of it that way, but as it turns out, I think you’re completely right. My only question is: what happens to our bodies when we start to use our brains more? What happens when we actually have a split mind? It has to affect our health somehow. An average person only uses, say, 15% of his/her brain. I read somewhere, I’lll look it up and cite it for you, I hate not citing my information, that even Einstein himself couldn’t have been using more than 25% or so. So what happens to us physically when our brains are overworked? I don’t know if I’m going completely out on a limb here and talking crazy, but wouldn’t it sort of decrease our body’s capabilty to function properly? Wouldn’t it actually make us sick? Call me out if I’m talking crazy, that’s just my thought process. I am completely naive when it comes to the medical side of this, I’ll admit. I’ll do research on this and bring it back.
Karla:
That’s a good point you bring up, but DID (MPD) is actually not as common as you might think. I’m a writer myself, and even though I struggle with things like this, I don’t have DID (MPD) straight out. I recognize what you’re trying to say, and the technique I use has been questioned by several people because it becomes so real. I could be crazy, I’ll freely admit this to anyone who bothers to take on my random ramblings, but what I’m trying to say is that it’s not the disorder itself that’s more prevalent in people, but the tendancies to want to compartmentalize and shut away certain memories and feelings. One of the common causes on DID (MPD) is abuse memories. The mind actually splits itself up to take away the feelings of being abused and to literally hide them so they don’t get in the way of day to day life. It’s a coping mechanism. So everyone has those tendancies to want to cope with things that happen and store them away in the brain. Correct me if I’m misinterpreting, please.
Everyone uses 100% of their brain, not all at one time, that’d be a seizsure. Some parts only get used when you see a bear or tiger or human with a spear running at you. Other parts get used for facial recognition, detection, language etc. If part of your brain was active when it wasn’t supposed to be you might not be able to stop voiding your bowels or pissing or you might feel terror 24/7.
The brain is never fully active because neurons fire in precise patterns, however throughout any 1 day, we are using the overwhelming majority. not 10% , not 50%.
If part of my brain is specialized for feces aversion I only want thst to activate in the presence of feces, otherwise I’d starve. So no, thankfully our brains aren’t 100% active continuously.
Anyway Dissociation Disorders are certainly mechanisms to deal with trauma. For example Soldiers often become depersonalized and for them killing is like watching a movie where the hero kills villains.
humans have psychological aversions to killing other humans, however by flipping the frame of reference its easier, viewing the person as subhuman like a rat allows for killing other humans.
My point is soldiers maintain the ability to kill by effectively viewing the “enemy” as less human, more beast. When this deception is broken the full force of the psychological trauma is brought on the soldier, in a war zone he starts to view the people he’s killing as humans.
the psychological trauma is too much to keep killing but you have too. So in another defence mechanism your mind represses your sense of self, a form of self deception to enable easier killing.
repression is a form of self deception, like repressing urges to hide the signs from others you have X urges.