Essay Sample. Billy Milligan

Bill Milligan remains one of the publicized people in the American judicial system due to his alleged abilities to transform into numerous personalities. Billy was born in 1955. His biological father, John Morrison, was the victim of depression and alcoholism, thus committed suicide when Billy was only four years old. Four years after the death of Billy's father, his mother began dating Chalmers Milligan and eventually got married to him. It was from this time that Billy started complaining that his step-father was sodomizing and threatening to hang him by his finger toes and burying him alive (Lathifah, 2008). A multiple personality condition, as currently defined and theorized, has limited psychotherapy interventions.

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Billy's Multi-Personality Condition

Billy Milligan is a multiple personality patient exposed to the transformation to his feeling in the form of identity, conscience, or memory. This condition could influence Billy's inability to recollect vital experience from the past, forget his character thereby acquiring new ones. Experts have perceived that Billy's taking of new identities was out of self-protection from experiencing traumatic patterns such as sexual torture or one's childhood physic (Lathifah, 2008). Milligan's personalities emerge as protective and good characters or unwanted ones which often exposed him to offending. He could transform into Ragen, (a 23-year Yugoslavian, a physically strong Karate expert who would speak authoritatively to protect Billy and other inferior personalities from external harshness. This personality influenced all the robberies.

Billy could also change into a female personality named Adalana who often wanted sex and would do anything, including violence to obtain sexual favors. Arthur is another personality associated with personality transformation (Lathifah, 2008). Whereas Billy was left-handed, the right-handed personality named Allen loved smoking and could use its high intellectual abilities to get Billy out of trouble. David enabled Billy to withstand painful moments like survived the hostilities at the age of 8. Others were the teacher, Tommy, Christopher, Danny, and Christene.

A Hypothesized Diagnosis of Billy's Condition

The review of Billy's symptoms, personal history and interview questions may indicate that he suffered from dissociative amnesia, dissociative identity disorder, and depersonalization-derealization condition. Regarding the disassociation amnesia, Billy is likely to have limited memory about his personal information in the form of history. Billy's memory loss does not happen only when experiencing another mental ailment like a post-traumatic stress disorder. Either, his condition is not as a result of drugs such as alcohol (Philips, 2007). The hypothesis would also reveal that Billy displays more than two different personalities which looks like he is unwillingly possessed (Lathifah, 2008). Billy could also display some characteristics of an individual who is detached from himself or experience hence operate like he is in a dream.

Treatment for Billy's Multiple Personality Condition

Physicians could employ various interventions to mitigate Billy's ailment. They could use psychotherapy to give cognitive interventions in the form of counselling. Also, cognitive behavior therapy could help to change Billy's dysfunctional thinking trends, behavior and feelings (Philips, 2007). The application of eye movement desensitization and reprocessing could also successfully mitigate post-traumatic effects like flashbacks and nightmares.

Personality Theories

The psychodynamic perspective facilitates in finding the origin of Billy's multiple personality conditions. Indeed, every stage of child growth exposes toddlers to huddles presenting a conflict between a chain of social expectations and biological drives. In this setting, Billy's condition could result from failure to complete these challenges and developmental stages (Smigiel, 2018). Besides, the cognitive-behavioral perspective explains that any person, including Billy, must encounter many behaviors, the past literature in the form of social expectations and beliefs as well as context situations which could construct personality behaviors as witnessed in Billy's case (Smigiel, 2018). The humanistic perspective deviates from traditional theories by focusing on human free will. Since birth, a person could get the motivation towards doing what satisfies the heart. As a result, one's conscious activities supersedes the unconscious ones.

References

Lathifah, F. (2008). The main character's multiple personalities in Daniel Keyes's the Mind of Billy Milligan. English letters and language department, January, 13. http://etheses.uin-malang.ac.id/4689/1/03320130.pdf

Phillips, J. (2007). The multiple personality case of Billy Still fascinates me. The Columbus Dispatch, October 2018. https://www.dispatch.com/article/20071028/NEWS/310289729

Smigiel, D. (2018). Theories of Personalities: Everything you need to know. Cognifit August 17. https://blog.cognifit.com/theories-of-personalities/