Tuesday, February 21, 2012

With Two You Get Eggroll

From the odd crimes department, this incident occurred on February 13th, in Pennsylvania:

Directly Lifted from the AP story:

"LEECHBURG, Pa. — Police say a western Pennsylvania man who claims to have split personalities confessed to robbing a Chinese restaurant after reading about it in the newspaper and realizing he was the person who did it.
Online court records don't list an attorney for 23-year-old Timothy Beer, of Leechburg, who's been jailed since surrendering in Sunday's robbery of the China King Restaurant about 35 miles northeast of Pittsburgh.
Beer came to the police station Tuesday, saying he wasn't feeling well and "did something stupid."
Beer told police he ordered food and became angry when he perceived the person waiting on him was continuing to speak Chinese. The next thing Beer remembers, he was playing video games at his cousin's home — but says he later realized he committed the robbery when he read about it in Tuesday's Valley News Dispatch."

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Some Thoughts:

1. People still read the newspaper?

2. Weekend, 23 years old, Chinese food, and playing video games? I'm gonna guess there may have been some THC involved in this dissociative state.

3. There is no longer "Multiple Personality Disorder." The correct term is "Dissociative Identity Disorder." There was a time (especially in the West Coast) where further diffraction of the personality was considered de rigeur for the therapy--a person would go in with two seperate personalityies and walk out with five or six. This often would occur during hypnotherapy. That is not what is recommended. Re-integration of the dissociative personality should be the goal of therapy in these situations.

4. There are many different types of dissociative states. Ever missed the exit while driving, becuse of "zoning out?" That is a dissociative state. Some psychiatric illnesses, such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, also can have episodes of dissociation (e.g during "flashbacks"). There are amnestic fugue states (where a person may "wake up" wandereing around in a strange city, confused) And, of course, there can be substance induced dissociation. None of these are of the "multiple personality" type-- dissociative identiy disorder.

5. I lifted a Doris Day movie title for this post, but "The Three Faces of Eve." might have been a better choice, and is certainly worth seeing. Does Hollywood present Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) well? "Primal Fear," and "Sybil" (like "Three Faces," also stars Joanne Woodward) do give DID a fair, by Hollywood standards, treatment. "Secret Window," "Fight Club," and "Identity" take the concept and run with it.