History Over the years, people with dissociative identity disorder (DID) have thought they were possessed by demons; this diagnosis continued into the nineteenth century and is still a common misdiagnosis in some parts of the world today. Starting from the 18th century, the theory of possession began to decline and the first case of DID was discovered in 1791 by Eberhardt Gmelin, a German doctor. In America in 1815, Mary Reynolds was discovered to have multiple personalities (Coons, 2011 p 3). The first studied case of DID was that of Pierre Janet in 1883. Patient Janet was a 45-year-old woman who had three different personalities. Her name was Leonie. Leonie had a personality that knew the other two and is known as the host. The personalities were able to control the body at different times and Leonie remembered nothing of these missing times. The one personality would take over, take Leonie to another place and let her take back control and she would have a panic attack without knowing where she was. (Manning & Manning, 2011 p 7). Janet took Leonie's case to other great names in psychology such as Jean-Martin Charcot, Frederick Myers and Charles Richet; these men looked into the case and agreed with Janet's findings. Janet described the splitting of personalities as the process of splitting consciousness as disaggregation. Disaggregation was later translated into English as dissociation. He described personality splits as successive existences that he believed were capable of having an independent identity and leading a different life. Janet believed that this split was caused by real trauma in Leonie's life. He believed he was treating the disorder he needed to bring to consciousness the splitting of memories and emotions and r...... middle of paper ......or be the cause of chronic post-traumatic psychopathology. There are various factories that contribute to this complex split of personalities. Excessive stress coinciding with the ability to separate one's memories, identity and perception from our conscious awareness, abnormal psychological development, and insufficient protection and love as a child (Pais, 2009 p 1). It is not yet clear how these lead to DID. Dissociative identity disorder tends to manifest in early childhood and arise during adolescence due to a protective reaction to childhood trauma, usually sexual abuse. Numerous studies have been conducted on early severe abuse and dissociative disorder. These identities are believed to be invented due to a unified personal identity that was not formed due to trauma, especially if the trauma occurred before the age of five (Pais, 2009 p.2).