Hola

[changelyng14.livejournal.com]

My apologies for asking about a charged and likely tired subject, but there's something I need to know.
This isn't really something we are considering but it's about integration.

I've heard huge amounts of information about it, but the one and only question I care about gets me evasive fantastic-sounding answers that have little to do with, in my mind, the question.

If my system hired some quack to 'integrate' us, and he was successful. What EXACTLY will happen?
will I exist? Will my mates exist? will we really be this exciting 'blend' of all of us? or is that just what quacks tell splits to make splits like the idea?
I 'mix' with my mates quite alot, and the 'whatever' that we become is no more them then me. Is that what integration does?
Is it normal for a split to fear death in face of integration in the same way its 'normal' for a singlet to fear death when their head is on a chopping block?
Is a 'being' post-integrated a reliable source to explain what happened to them? Are there any post-integrates willing to explain what they've figured out about it in the sort of language I've gotten used to?

I'm very ignorant of this topic, I rarely find anything on the subject but things written to a singlet audience.

Thanks

Synch of Changelyng

Comments

[changelyng14.livejournal.com]

ooooooo! there and back again?

Thanks for the reply.

I may be paranoid but maybe brainwashing is a key part of integration? (not that some don't need their brains washed from time to time :p) but the two processes seem to have at least some in common.

If i was a famous shrink and some split walked into my office, all my wisdom, expertise, and training would be to do what i try to do for all my patients. make them 'normal' like everyone else, ie: one-brain-one-body in this case.
Integration certainly seems to do that, but its a little convenient imo.

thanks for the reply. heh, longer plz. Im sure ill be getting flamed soon for my length's tho. I've heard the arguments for it, but when I stand up to my friends whom I value, that my road isn't integration. I'd like to be able to sound convincing when I do my integration=death thing for them.

But if I'm the fool, maybe I should do this :P

[kangetsuhime.livejournal.com]

..... what makes you think the goal of shrinks is to make you normal? o.O

[changelyng14.livejournal.com]

I kind of assumed it, honestly.

my shrink is all about 'functional', and is also rather respectful. cares whom we be etc. likes the goal of 'functional', doesnt do hypnotism, and is curiously uneducated on integration in light of his caseload who are split.

Historical Psychology has resorted to some bizzarre methods to try to 'fix' various 'problems' and imo, tend to shed doubt as to weather or not they have 'patients' and 'humans' in the same category from time to time. but MPD has been put on the same list of some rather creepy sounding states of being.

My happy shrink seems very interested in seeing each of us become 'normal' or, rather, less burdened with issues at least.
The mad mad movie scientist walks about with a butcherknife collecting body parts from his victims trying to make the ideal superhuman.
The voice of the Psychologists who are currently actively debating in the Psychology Journals as to whether MPD is really really real and if it should be taken seriously. The MD someone-someone i loosely quote as saying the "psychologist who doesn't consider complete integration as the only treatment for (mpd) lacks imagination" (my apologies for a lack of a proper source)
This fellow, in his mind, is fighting for the big cure. He doesn't believe I'm real, nor that I'm human, nor that my existance matters. I'm not the patient with a problem. I be one of the problems stopping this system from being a happy single. in his way, he sincerely hopes to help the 'me' he is so sure is in here somewhere.

He can kiss my wrinkly ass, but I do respect that it is his goal to be helpful. :)

Forgive me. I'm a huge lover of debate and can take nearly any side of any coin. I'm a fanatic of the truth, painful or not. and I tear everything apart with a rabidness that makes my system worry.
I have to know why integration is not my road. I have to know everything that can be known about it, and be able to make every argue for or against it, before I can, in my mind, be done with it.

My whole system isn't that way, just me and mania. especially when we join :P

I'm driven to know, and im having trouble finding educated sources on the matter. this group clearly lives it, and odviously doesn't feel that they need a doctor to allow them to diagnose themself, wipe their derrier, nor anything else and thats huge to me. thanks :P

[kangetsuhime.livejournal.com]

.... LJ ate my reply. I'll try again later when that doesn't make me want to smash the monitor in.

I hate LJ.

(Short form: Psychologists are meant to cure disorders, not make you normal. Unfortunately the make you normal one is the one a lot of people thing is what it should be.)

[changelyng14.livejournal.com]

ahhh....

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately the make you normal one is the one a lot of people thing is what it should be.)

Including far too many mental health professionals. The mental health industry is so politicized that their definitions of "normal" and "disorder" cannot be trusted.

Mental health professionals have always been in the business of making people normal in the sense that therapy is meant to help us adjust to societal norms, rather than the other way around. For a brief time in the 1960s and 70s, there was a movement in psychiatry against this type of thinking, but it fell by the wayside and became assimilated into the AHP, who are no longer taken seriously thanks to their toasterish extremes.

[kangetsuhime.livejournal.com]

It's crap I know. The ethical and logical defenitions of a good psychologist, and 'disorder' (which I often throw at people who go HEY YOU NEED HELP) are a lot different from what even the industry itself can make them out to be.

But it's still true to say that the (rare) psychologist who tries to help you function is the good shrink and the others are corrupt sick selfish bastards. More or less.

Technically you can still be 'abnormal' I think. For example they might try and help you control yourself not to burst into song in the middle of your work office, but they SHOULDN'T stop you doing it anywhere else. (Except where it classes of breach of the peace of course)



.... I sound terrible. This is why I shouldn't post in the mornings. Did my point get across?

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

Yes, it did, we understood exactly what you were saying. Jay used to clerk for a psychologist who fit your description of one who wouldn't stop you singing altogether, so we know they exist. This man did not believe in pathologising every quirk or eccentricity that came down the pipe; if he had, he'd have had to put himself in a straitjacket. And he'd be the first to tell you so. One key to his success was that he never took himself too seriously; his degree was not a mantle of infallibility, the way it is for too many.

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

I may be paranoid but maybe brainwashing is a key part of integration? (not that some don't need their brains washed from time to time :p) but the two processes seem to have at least some in common.

You're not totally off. From what we've heard, the process of integration involves literally re-conditioning your way of thinking-- training you to think and react as a single person, rather than as many. A lot of older theories of integration saw it as being simply 'putting the broken pieces back together'-- the idea was that multiplicity was an unnatural state, and that the natural inclination of the mind was towards being a single person (even William James disputed this). If you could squeeze everyone together, the thinking went, the 'original self' would fuse like a broken bone.

What happens in reality, though, is that even a person who begins as a fragment of another can develop. Personality doesn't break up into all these little neatly defined pieces-- even if someone starts out only being capable of certain tasks or feeling certain emotions, if they spend enough time at front and have to change and develop in response to the challenges placed on them by the earth world, they can develop new skills, acquire the ability to feel a range of emotions. If they become capable of handling the body's life in their own right, the idea that they still need to be merged with others in order to be 'whole' becomes much more dubious.

thanks for the reply. heh, longer plz. Im sure ill be getting flamed soon for my length's tho.

You're fine. Nobody flames anyone else on this group-- it's in the community info. If you do, you get your post deleted and get warned by the mod, and then kicked off. If you're afraid your post is too long, you might want to put it behind an lj-cut.