Personality

The Self and Personality are related but not identical concepts. Dissociation and dissociative disorders often involve an unstable sense of identity, as experienced with identity confusion and identity alteration. In the landmark book, Dissociation and the Dissociative Disorders, Nijenhuis and den Boer discuss genetic factors and gene-environment interaction as they define personality as "the dynamic organization within the individual of those biopsychosocial systems that determine his or her characteristic actions." Personality is in part, an interaction between our genetic makeup and the environment in which we interact.

A more updated definition of personality is by Nijenhuis and van der Hart and goes as follows:

"Personality can be defined as a biopsychosocial system that determines an individual's characteristic mental and behavioral actions. This definition highlights the fact that personality includes perception and emotion; that perception, emotion, and thought involve mental actions, including decision making; and that behavior involves combined mental and motor action. Personality constitutes a whole system that has an ongoing tendency toward integration, that is, binding and differentiation of different components of experiences (e.g., perceptions, emotions, thoughts) as well as different experiences across time. In dissociation in trauma, personality as a system includes two or more insufficiently integrated subsystems."

Frank Putnum, a long time leader in the area of Dissociative Identity Disorder has long emphasized that humans do not begin life with a unified personality, but instead the human personality must become linked over time. This linking is what is referred to as integration. Integration is not making all parts one, instead it is the linking of all parts so they can work together as in the normal mind.

Self
The idea that the self is a unitary and isolated thing is an illusion. In infancy a child cries, wakes, sleeps, drinks, eliminates, etc. These are behavioral states which at first are due to biology, and are quite distinct. Over time they become linked, more so if a child receives appropriate care and parenting. More linking occurs over time, but the human mind maintains a distinction between parts so the parts can perform various jobs or roles that make it possible to adapt to changing situations. All humans have multiple and varied selves. Research shows that relationship histories between various parts, and with other humans shape our patterns of feeling, attitudes and meanings that we are likely to exhibit throughout our lives. Whichever self is present in the conscious mind at the moment is influenced by our relationship history with other humans and with our various selves, and states do not always agree, there can be conflict between them. Achieving greater linking and a sense of coherence is beneficial to all individuals, which is, of course, done through the life-long journey of integration. See also integration.