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was most common in women and often arose as a coping mechanism for repeated physical or sexual abuse. Most frequently, the second identity manifested for the purpose of absorbing the host’s pain by enduring the trauma in her place—a kind of proxy victim—sustaining the anguish, blocking all memory of it, and enabling the host to “disassociate” from her own suffering. The secondary personality was known as the alternate or “alter” and typically appeared in an abrupt schismatic break during acute trauma. Having manifested, the alter could then take up permanent residence in the host, lingering for years or a lifetime as a kind of guardian, even subsuming the subject’s darkest memories in a kind of selective amnesia—providing a clean slate with which to move forward. It was not uncommon for a protective alter to assume control of the body and become the dominant personality, deciding when and how the traumatized subject could safely “surface.” Dissociative identity disorder had first been diagnosed in the 1800s under the name “double consciousness”—a kind of waking sleepwalking in which an individual seemed to be taken over by another consciousness, who then carried out actions without the permission, knowledge, or recollection of the individual. Two of the most extraordinary cases in history were so meticulously documented that they became the basis for the bestsellers The Three Faces of Eve, Strangers in My Body, and Sybil. Of course, the most famous book of all time on the condition was Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Katherine knew that many instances of DID involved multiple alters—some with more than a dozen identities living in one host body. Incredibly, the alters all had different voices, accents, handwriting, skill sets, food preferences, and even gender identities. They walked differently, preferred different living spaces, suffered different physical ailments, and even had different IQs and eyesight. One radio receiving multiple distinct stations… Psychiatrists diverged wildly over how these stark dissimilarities between alters could be possible, and some skeptics even accused DID patients of being skilled actors looking for attention. However, when patients submitted to rigorous testing involving MRIs, lie detectors, and sophisticated lines of interrogation, the results were always the same—there were indeed multiple discrete individuals existing within one body. Some of the alters were aware of the others living with them in what was known as “the system.” These alters were called “co-conscious.” In contrast, some alters were oblivious that the system even existed, believing instead that they were alone in the body. They often suffered memory gaps when stronger alters blocked them out, taking over the forefront of the mind in an action known as “fronting.
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