How can you get Multiple Personality Disorder?

Answer 1

(Possibly, not always. There's much research to be done on the topic.) Extreme physical, sexual and emotional abuse beginning in early childhood. A young child, anywhere from birth to about 3 or 4 years old, whose personality is not yet fully formed and solidified, is faced with being utterly dependent on the on the person/people who are abusing her/him. The child learns to cope by splitting into one or more parts/alters that deal with the abusers and the abuse, e.g., one might deal with the anger and fear, and another might be a happy, playful child that loves the abusers because s/he doesn't have to think about or remember the other things they do to her/him.

Although much ado is made about MPD (now called Dissociative Identity Disorder) - and I do not want to downplay the seriousness of it - it's really just a fancy coping mechanism. However, once the child's mind learns how to "split," it becomes the primary (superordinate) coping mechanism, so the usual coping skills, e.g., managing anger and stress, denial, establishing boundaries, etc., don't develop and are not learned. Splitting is fast, becomes second nature, and is a lot easier than dealing with anger, betrayal, fear, etc., which is why it becomes problematic as the person grows into adulthood.