Children and Adolescents: Recognizing Multiple Personality (a.k.a. Dissociative Identity) by using Dissociative Experience Checklists

Multiple personality begins in childhood, but most mental health professionals who work with children have never learned its symptoms or made the diagnosis.

What follows are two checklists of symptoms, one for children and one for adolescents.

If a child or adolescent has many of these symptoms, then multiple personality should be suspected, but the formal diagnosis is not made until alternate personalities acknowledge their presence: which they usually will not do until someone recognizes the clues, realizes what is going on, and inquires specifically about this or that specific symptom.

Of course, if these psychological phenomena are not causing any significant distress or dysfunction, then they are not really “symptoms,” per se, and a “diagnosis,” per se, cannot be made. Without distress or dysfunction, there is no mental illness, and the child or adolescent has multiple personality trait (MPT), not multiple personality disorder (MPD). Most people with multiple personality have the trait, not the disorder.

Child Dissociative Checklist (CDC) by Frank W. Putnam, M.D.

1. Child does not remember or denies traumatic or painful experiences that are known to have occurred.

2. Child goes into a daze or trance-like state at times or often appears “spaced out.” Teachers may report that he or she “daydreams” frequently in school.

3. Child shows rapid changes in personality. He or she may go from being shy to being outgoing, from feminine to masculine, from timid to aggressive.

4. Child is unusually forgetful or confused about things that he or she should know; e.g. may forget the names of friends, teachers or other important people, loses possessions or gets easily lost.

5. Child has a very poor sense of time. He or she loses track of time, may think it is morning when it is actually afternoon, gets confused about what day it is, or becomes confused about when something has happened.

6. Child shows marked day-to-day or even hour-to-hour variations in his or her skills, knowledge, food preferences, athletic abilities; e.g. changes in handwriting, memory for previously learned information such as multiplication tables, spelling, use of tools or artistic ability.

7. Child shows rapid regressions in age-level behavior, e.g. a twelve-year-old starts to use baby-talk, sucks thumb, or draws like a four-year-old.

8. Child has a difficult time learning from experience; e.g. explanations, normal discipline or punishment do not change his or her behavior.

9. Child continues to lie or deny misbehavior even when the evidence is obvious.

10. Child refers to himself or herself in the third person (e.g., as she or her) when talking about self, or at times insists on being called by a different name. He or she may also claim that things that he or she did actually happened to another person.

11. Child has rapidly changing physical complaints such as headache or upset stomach. For example, he or she may complain of a headache one minute and seem to forget about it the next.

12. Child is unusually sexually precocious and may attempt age-inappropriate sexual behavior with other children or adults.

13. Child suffers from unexplained injuries or may even deliberately injure self at times.

14. Child reports hearing voices that talk to him or her. The voices may be friendly or angry and may come from “imaginary companions” or sound like the voices of parents, friends or teachers.

15. Child has a vivid imaginary companion or companions [and may not feel that they are only pretend]. Child may insist that the imaginary companion(s) is responsible for things that he or she has done.

16. Child has intense outbursts of anger, often without apparent cause and may display unusual physical strength during these episodes.

17. Child sleepwalks frequently.

18. Child has unusual nighttime experiences; e.g. may report seeing “ghosts” or that things happen at night that he or she can’t account for; e.g., broken toys, unexplained injuries.

19. Child frequently talks to him or herself, may use a different voice or argue with self at times.

20. Child has two or more distinct and separate personalities that take control over the child’s behavior.

Items from Adolescent Dissociative Experiences Scale (A-DES) by Judith Armstrong, PhD, Eve Bernstein Carlson, PhD, and Frank W. Putnam, M.D.

2. I get back tests or homework that I don’t remember doing.

3. I have strong feelings that don’t seem like they are mine.

4. I can do something really well one time and then I can’t do it at all another time.

5. People tell me I do or say things that I don’t remember doing or saying.

9. I hear voices in my head that are not mine.

11. I am so good at lying and acting that I believe it myself.

12. I catch myself “waking up” in the middle of doing something.

13. I don’t recognize myself in the mirror.

15. I find myself someplace and I don’t remember how I got there.

16. I have thoughts that don’t really seem to belong to me.

20. People tell me that I sometimes act so differently that I seem like a different person.

21. It feels like there are walls inside my mind.

22. I find writings, drawings or letters that I must have done but I can’t remember doing.

25. I find myself standing outside of my body, watching myself as if I were another person.

26. My relationships with my family and friends change suddenly and I don’t know why.

27. I feel like my past is a puzzle and some of the pieces are missing.

29. I feel like there are different people inside of me.

30. My body feels as if it doesn’t belong to me.