Men with DID (MPD) are most likely to be in treatment for other mental illnesses, for drug and alcohol abuse, or incarcerated. According to Joan Acocella," 40,000 cases of MPD were reported between 1985 and 1995. According to the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, 92 percent of the people who have it are female; 74 percent are between the ages of 31 and 50; 31 percent have education beyond college; and 60 percent report memory of abuse prior to age 4 (Acocella, 1999).
The literature defines a cure as integration-the repeated merging of one personality with another until only one remains. There are many steps along the way. The first is building trust-Multiples have been betrayed by the people they should have been able to count on, and they constantly "test" their therapists. .
Next comes the recovery of memories. In theory, once a memory is recovered, the personality that held it will no longer be tortured by it. The false-memory-syndrome- movement supports the fact that some therapists implant memories in their patients, causing them to unjustly accuse their parents or caregivers of abuse. .
However, Jean Piaget, the great child psychologist, claimed that his earliest memory was of nearly being kidnapped at the age of 2. He remembered details such as sitting in his baby carriage, watching the nurse defend herself against the kidnapper, scratches on the nurse's face, and a police officer with a short cloak and a white baton chasing the kidnapper away. The story was reinforced by the nurse and the family and others who had heard the story. Piaget was convinced that he remembered the event. However, it never happened. Thirteen years after the alleged kidnapping attempt, Piaget's former nurse wrote to his parents to confess that she had made up the entire story. Piaget later wrote: "I therefore must have heard, as a child, the account of this story.and projected it into the past in the form of a visual memory, which was a memory of a memory, but false (Hilgard, 1988)".
