Dissociative Identity Disorder is also referred to as multiple personality disorder, in which an individual's identity dissociates, or fragments, creating additional identities that exist independently of each other within the individual (Gale 2001). Each personality is specifically distinct from the other, such as tone of voice and mannerisms, vocabulary and posture (Gale 2001). Most people exhibit only one or two personalities, however, there are cases in which an individual will have more than a hundred identities (Gale 2001). Whether one or a hundred, the criteria for diagnosis is the same (Gale 2001). Until the publication of DSM-IV, this disorder was referred to as multiple personality disorder, a name abandoned due to psychiatric explicitness, hence, the name should reflect the "dissociative aspect of the disorder" (Gale 2001).

The DSM-IV lists four criteria for diagnosing someone with dissociative identity disorder. The first being the presence of two or more distinct 'identities or...
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