​Often, in a strange way, the person who had traumatized the individual (i.e., the DID patient) has an alter after their name or nickname. Understandably, such alters are not co-conscious with the victim. In fact, the more traumatic the memory, it is likely the fragmented memory will be buried deep within the subconscious of the victim and may only surface towards the end of the treatment regime. 

So, a multiple rape victim may have several alters, each named after a perpetrator. The patient, most likely, has no complete memory of any of those incidents, or very sketchy ones. She may deny that they ever occurred. Therefore, when an (perpetrator) alter surfaces, the client will not be able to hear him audibly. Successful treatment that would lead to the integration of these truncated memories would be for the victim to hear the (perpetrator) part’s story. Under a trance state or hypnotic state, with the consent of the rapist alter, the victim is called out to listen in on the former’s story. 

Sometimes, permission is not given if the alter is not ready to self-reveal to the victim. On occasions, alters will refuse permission to share their traumatic tale as they had been keeping it for so long to themselves, and they assumed that they are separate ‘persons’ from the victim. In which case, the object of this intriguing eye-opening process is to illustrate to these alters that they share the same body with the victim.  Again, this can only be completed under hypnosis, as it requires alternately, both the alter and the victim to be co-conscious at the same time as they literally ‘see’ that they occupy one body. 

Let’s assume permission had been given by the personality part. Then hearing one another speak aids in their understanding that there is a memory that is sitting outside the main memory system of the victim.  With their permission, integrating their memories would be the final step. We will address the integration process later.

​Forgiveness, a positive universal human trait, is necessary for emotional and spiritual healing. However, in the case of a dissociated individual, where emotional and physical abuses are, at times, invariably horrendous, to immediately seek forgiveness for the abuser is controversial. This is especially if the perpetrator is still in proximity to the abused, either living with them or have regular visiting rights. Forgiving the abuser as a pre-condition to recovery from rage and other psychopathologies engendered by sexual and physical abuses had been intensely debated in the psychological and therapeutic arena. It needs to be understood that forgiving is not a condoning or excusing of the crime perpetrated. It is important to predicate that the victim does not say that what had been done to her was ‘acceptable or not so bad.’ Forgiveness is not a one-time, clear-cut decision. If it occurs, it is because of confronting painful past experiences and healing of old wounds. The prospect of revictimization due to a consequence of premature forgiveness is very real. 

What are fragmented traumatic memories in a dissociative identity disorder (DID) individual? A brief orientation of human memory may be appropriate, and in this respect, Peter Levine’s SIBAM dissociation model will be used to conceptualize memory fragmentation. 

SIBAM is the acronym for the coding of certain elements of our memory; namely, sensation, image, behaviour, affect and meaning. When we experience an event, our memory begins to code our completed exposure to the incident and is stored in the brain, and we can recall it in all its SIBAM-related perspective. That would be considered a normal memory, excluding old age lapses and mental recall pathologies. Under traumatic stress, elements of SIBAM memories become disconnected from each other. For example, after a disturbing event, a child may exhibit repetitive play (behaviour), but does not display any emotion (affect) or appear to remember the event (image). Or, while watching a TV programme, a lady may be triggered by a disturbing visual scene (image) and strong emotions connected with it (affect), but unable to make any sense of it (meaning). So, it is quite normal for a DID person to recall incidents but have vague or no memories whether they had experienced the events or are unable to feel anything about it. 

​How do our brains fragment memories? Individuals who report dissociative phenomena during traumatic incidents would describe their experiences like: 

It was as though I had left my body.

Time slowed down at the time.

I felt dead.

I could not feel any pain.

All I saw was the knife, nothing else mattered.

And after the traumatic event, perhaps weeks, months, or years later, the dissociated individual identified their experiences by numbing, flashbacks, partial or complete amnesia, out-of-the-body experiences, inability to feel emotion, unexplained irrational behaviours, emotional reactions that seemingly have no basis, or depersonalization.

An individual may be able to relate, for example, how their life was threatened by a gunman after witnessing a parent being shot by him, but seemingly showing no emotions speaking about it, or perhaps unable to recall what time of the day that event took place, or who else was present with him.

Reasons have been advanced for the coding of traumatic memories in the brain, but one of the most plausible being the minds inability to cope with the trauma and the extreme emotion engendered that probably caused an individual to fragment the pain from the event. Usually, the earliest dissociative tendencies are seen in young children who had been traumatized. With an underdeveloped cognitive capacity, a child is unable to process what is happening mentally, and the safest way to handle traumatic pain, for some children, is to separate the memory on the incident from the memory system. Once, he learns to do that successfully, any further stressful experiences would be handled similarly.

​Hence, it would not be unusual once fragmented memories have been reconnected, the individual will feel an overwhelming sense of emotion tied to the trauma incident. This inevitably will result in an outpouring of tears, and anger at times.