1. Dissociative Disorders: Altered Consciousness
Dissociative disorders involve a break, or dissociation, in consciousness, memory, or a
person’s sense of identity. This split is easier to understand when thinking about how
peoples sometimes drive somewhere and then wonder how they got there-they don’t
remember the trip itself at all. This sort of automatic pilot driving happens when the
route is familiar and frequently traveled.
Types of dissociative disorders
Dissociative Amnesia: Who Am I?
One cannot remember personal information such as ones own name or specific
personal events. This memory loss is usually associated with a stressful or emotionally
traumatic experience, such as childhood abuse and cannot be explained by simple
forgetfulness. It can be a loss of memory for only small segment of time, or it can
involve a total loss of ones past personal memories. For example, a soldier might be
able to remember being in combat but cannot remember witnessing a friend get killed,
or a person might forget his/her entire life. These memories usually resurfaces,
sometimes quickly, and sometimes after a long delay
Dissociative Fugue: Who Am I And How Did I Get Here?
It occurs when a person suddenly travels away from home and afterward’s cannot
remember the trip or even personal information such as identity. The person may
become confused about identity, sometimes even taking on a whole new identity in the
new place. Such disorder usually takes place after an emotional trauma and is more
common in times of disasters or wars.
Dissociative Identity Disorder: How Many Am I?
Disorder occurring when a person seems to have two or more distinct personalities
within one body.
There may be a core personality, who usually knows nothing about the others
personality and is the one who experience blackouts or losses of memory and times.
For example, Core personality experiencing the unsettling moments of awakening in an
unfamiliar place or sometimes peoples call the person by another name.
First it was reported as clinical disorder, many believe that cases of so-called spirit or
demon possession were possibly people with this disorder.
Freudian psychoanalysts believe that multiple personalities come about as a way of
coping with extreme stress, usually in the early childhood. Many people who have been

2. diagnosed as multiples are the women with a history of childhood sexual or physical
abuse.
After several publications it become well known to the public and become fad disorder
of the late twentieth disorder.
Some psychological professionals believe that dissociative identity disorders are
actually a misdiagnosis of borderline personality disorder or some other form of anxiety
disorder.
Causes of Dissociative disorders
Psychoanalytic theory, of course, sees the repression of threatening or unacceptable
thoughts and behavior at the heart of all disorders, and the dissociative disorders in
particular seems to have a large element of repression in them.
Dissociation in Freudian theory is a defense mechanism and is associated with
emotional or physical trauma.
Cognitive and behavioral explanations for dissociative disorders are connected: the
person may feel guilt, shame or anxiety when thinking about disturbing experiences or
thoughts and stat avoiding thoughts about them. This thought avoidance is negatively
reinforced by the reduction of the anxiety and the unpleasant feelings and eventually will
become a habit of “not thinking about” these things. This is similar to what many people
do when faced with something unpleasant. They think about something else. In doing
that, they are deliberately not thinking about what is happening to them at the moment
and the experience of pain is decreased. People with dissociative disorder may simply
be better at doing this sort of “not thinking” than other people are.
Researchers have found that people with depersonalization disorder (disorder in which
a person feels detached and disconnected from themselves their bodies and their
surroundings) have lower brain activity in the areas responsible for their sense of body
awareness than do people without dissociative disorder.
Mood Disorders: The Effect of Affect
Mood disorders are disturbance in emotions and are also referred to as effective
disorders. Although the range of human emotions runs from deep, intense sadness and
despair to extreme happiness and elation, under normal circumstances peoples stay in
between those extremes-neither too sad nor too happy but content.
There are two relatively mild mood disorders, although their mildness does not mean
that people suffering from these disorders do not need help.

3. Dysthmia: a moderate depression that last for two years or more and is typically a
reaction to some external stressor.
Cyclothymia: disorder that consists of mood swings from moderate depression to
hypomania and last two years or more.
Major depression
Severe depression that comes on suddenly and seems to have no external cause.
Major depression would fall at thee far extreme of sadness. People suffering from the
major depression are depressed for most of everyday, take little or no pleasure in any
activity, feel tired etc.
Bipolar disorders
Major depression is sometimes referred to as a unipolar disorder because emotional
problem exists at only one end or pole of emotional range. When a person suffers from
severe mood swings that go all the way from severe depression to manic episodes, that
person is said to suffer from bipolar disorder, meaning that emotions cycle between the
two poles of possible emotions. There is no external cause for the extreme ups and
downs of the bipolar person. The depressive phase of bipolar person are
indistinguishable from major depression but give way to manic episodes that may last
from a few weeks to a few months. In these manic episodes, the person is extremely
happy or euphoric. Restlessness, irritability, an ability to sit still or remain inactive and
seemingly unlimited energy are also common. The persons may seems silly to others
and can become aggressive when not allowed to carry out the grand plans that are
often he hallmark of manic phase. Speech may be rapid and jump from one topic to
another. Oddly, people in the manic state are often very creative until their lack of
organization renders their attempts at being creative useless.
That sounds almost like a description of an overactive child- cant sit still, cant
concentrate- are they related? The answer to this question is actually part of an ongoing
controversy. The symptoms of bipolar disorder include irrational thinking and other
manic symptoms.
Causes of mood disorder
Explanations of depression and other mood disorders include psychoanalytic, learning,
biological and genetic theories. Psychoanalytic theories see depression as anger turned
inward on the person. This anger, originally aimed at parents or other authority figures
who are too threatening to receive the expressions of anger directly, gets repressed by
the child and late is displaced to the self in the form of self-blame and self-hate.

4. Learning theories link depression to learned helplessness whereas social cognitive
theorists point to distortions of thinking such as blowing negatives events out of
proportions and minimizing positive, good events.
Biological explanations of mood disorders focus on the effects of brain chemicals such
as serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine, drug used to treat depression and mania
typically affects the level of these three neurotransmitters, either alone or in
combination.
Genes may also play a part in mood disorders. The fact that the more severe mood
disorders are not a reaction to some outside source of stress or anxiety but rather than
seem to come from within the persons own body , together with the tendency of mood
disorder to appear in genetically related individuals at a higher rate, suggests rather
strongly that inheritance may play a significant part in these disorders .