Multiple Personalities

During chapter 12, I read about personality. I learned the different theories on how our personality is influenced. Whether it is influenced internally, environmentally, observed, or reinforced. I also learned about different personality traits people have if they are introverts, extraverts, open to experience, conscientious, ect. While reading about these different personalities, I kept thinking about this movie I watched called Sybil directed by Daniel Petrie. This movie is a true story of a woman named Sybil, who had a very traumatic childhood and she developed 13 different personalities.
Multiple Personality Disorder (also known as Dissociative Identity Disorder), is a severe dissociation which causes a lack of connection in someone’s thoughts, memories, feelings, actions, or sense of identity. Someone with Multiple Personality Disorder has two or more personalities, each of which has a different way of viewing the world. Each personality might also have a different way of reacting to different stimuli. For Sybil, she would black out and wouldn’t remember how she got to certain places. She would also act shy and speak softly at times and she was more outgoing and energetic at others. She developed Multiple Personality because she tried to protect herself from psychological pain that was too much for certain personalities to handle.

Memory loss

During chapter 7, we talked a lot about short term memory, long term memory, and memory loss. For someone who has a normal memory, their short term lasts for about twenty seconds and can hold five to seven items at a time. For long term memory, it is essentially permanent and can hold an unlimited amount. But, if someone has been in an injury, they can later suffer from memory loss. Depending on the injury, someone can suffer from either retrograde or anterograde amnesia.
My uncle is a perfect example of someone who suffers from anterograde amnesia because he can’t remember events that have occurred after the accident. My uncle is married and has two children. When he was 33 years old, he was in a horrible car accident. Driving down the high way, a truck hit the back side of his car and it caused it to roll over several times. He was unconscious when the police arrived at the scene. Now many years later he suffers from memory loss. He can remember that he is married and knows who his wife is, but he can’t remember what a marriage actually is. If he is retold what it is, he will know for about twenty seconds then forget, and can’t remember. He also knows that he is a father to two wonderful children but he can’t comprehend what a father is and what he is supposed to do. As he observes other fathers and hears his friends talk about their children he can understand what a father is for as long as his short term memory lasts, but will later forget.

Operant Conditioning

In chapter 6, the topic was different types of learning. Some types of learning are classical conditioning using conditioned and unconditioned stimuli and responses, operant conditioning using reinforcements, and observational learning. During the chapter we watched a lecture about autism and how operant conditioning could be used to help teach autistic new tasks by giving them reinforcements such as food, kisses, and praise when they did what they were told, but received no reinforcement when they threw tantrums and used aggression.
I thought that this video was really interesting to see how the treatment was performed because I have a cousin who is autistic and I have been able to see first hand how he has progressed. When he was little he wouldn’t communicate with anyone, instead he would scream and would run from one thing to another. Over the years of treatment he has developed many skills. Now he is twelve and can communicates with everyone and does not stop talking. For example, during family get togethers, he fixates of one thing and obsesses about it. For him, he goes to every person he has seen before and says “hey, I know you,” and he can remember where he has seen you before and will keep talking about how he knows you until he sees another person that he remembers. He is also able to attend school with normal students and keeps learning everyday. His therapists have used operant conditioning to allow him to associate with others and build skills to help him become more independent.

Myths about Dreaming

A dream is a series of images, ideas, and emotions that occur while you sleep. There are many different myths about dreaming such as falling to the ground in your dream means that you actually die in real life or that you can’t control your dreams.
For me, I used to have many myths about sleeping and dreaming. I used to think that if I woke up remembering my dream, I dreamt that night, but if I woke up not remembering a dream, I didn’t dream. After reading this chapter, I learned that you dream during REM sleep and if I woke up in the middle of my dream I would be more likely to remember it than if I woke up during NREM sleep. But just because I don’t remember my dreams, doesn’t mean that I don’t dream. Another myth I had was about the actual dreams themselves. I used to think that if I thought about something, such as a person or winning an award, as I was lying in bed, I would then dream about what I was thinking about when I fell asleep. In reality, no one knows for sure, but there are different theories about dreams. One of the theories about dreams is wish fulfillment. Wish fulfillment is the theory that people dream about fulfilling ungratified needs from waking hours. Also, another theory is the problem solving theory, which says people dream to engage in creative thinking about pressing personal issues because dreams aren’t restrained to logic.