Allison's a flake, and he is not taken seriously in the psychiatric community. In fact, he probably did more to discredit multiplicity with the mainstream than even Colin Ross. The fact that his website is called "All About Multiple Personality" has always amused us -- how can a singlet possibly know all about multiplicity even with consultation?
He has always been unduly fascinated by multiplicity and by his multiple clients. His interviews with D. Scott Rogo for Infinite Boundary illustrate his tendency to get enmeshed to the point that he actually believes his clients are having a psychic draining effect on him, rather than attributing his exhaustion simply to lack of sufficient boundaries on his part when dealing with extremely high-maintenance clients. Ex-preachers who become psychoanalysts may tend toward this kind of will-to-believe behaviour; Robert Phillips, who is still Truddi Chase's therapist, manager and handler, fell prey to the same fascination.
Apparently he became infatuated with one of his clients to the point that he took every word she said about her operating system as gospel for all systems.
Allison is responsible for the urban legend that multiples are by nature or on average more psychic than singlets. He said somewhere he'd never met a multiple who wasn't highly psychic. Some people believe that this means it has been "scientifically documented" or that a formal study was done. It wasn't, and I doubt it ever will be. For a while, it was almost de rigeur for therapists to ask to talk to the "inner self-helper" as if all systems had one and as if it were always possible to talk to that one. It's very possible that some clients who were genuinely multiple made up angels or ISHs or whatever in order to please an Allison-like therapist.
Hypnosis and the idea that multiples are "more hypnotizable" than singlets are also controversial notions. We believe personally that these labels have more to do with the singlet doctors trying to explain to themselves things they cannot understand about their multiple clients. I won't go into what I think of hypnosis here.
One thing he did do was explain the real reason MPD was changed to DID, and why you shouldn't call yourself DID if you actually have coexisting selves who are persons in their own right and not just parts of one person. What he doesn't tell you is that he is one of the reasons the academics didn't want to acknowledge multiplicity.
http://www.astraeasweb.net/plural/allison.html
Current mood: resigned, the cat barfed again Current music: Steve Miller - Wild Mountain Honey.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2005-03-09 07:37 am (UTC)He has always been unduly fascinated by multiplicity and by his multiple clients. His interviews with D. Scott Rogo for Infinite Boundary illustrate his tendency to get enmeshed to the point that he actually believes his clients are having a psychic draining effect on him, rather than attributing his exhaustion simply to lack of sufficient boundaries on his part when dealing with extremely high-maintenance clients. Ex-preachers who become psychoanalysts may tend toward this kind of will-to-believe behaviour; Robert Phillips, who is still Truddi Chase's therapist, manager and handler, fell prey to the same fascination.
Apparently he became infatuated with one of his clients to the point that he took every word she said about her operating system as gospel for all systems.
Allison is responsible for the urban legend that multiples are by nature or on average more psychic than singlets. He said somewhere he'd never met a multiple who wasn't highly psychic. Some people believe that this means it has been "scientifically documented" or that a formal study was done. It wasn't, and I doubt it ever will be. For a while, it was almost de rigeur for therapists to ask to talk to the "inner self-helper" as if all systems had one and as if it were always possible to talk to that one. It's very possible that some clients who were genuinely multiple made up angels or ISHs or whatever in order to please an Allison-like therapist.
Hypnosis and the idea that multiples are "more hypnotizable" than singlets are also controversial notions. We believe personally that these labels have more to do with the singlet doctors trying to explain to themselves things they cannot understand about their multiple clients. I won't go into what I think of hypnosis here.
One thing he did do was explain the real reason MPD was changed to DID, and why you shouldn't call yourself DID if you actually have coexisting selves who are persons in their own right and not just parts of one person. What he doesn't tell you is that he is one of the reasons the academics didn't want to acknowledge multiplicity.
http://www.astraeasweb.net/plural/allison.html
Current mood: resigned, the cat barfed again
Current music: Steve Miller - Wild Mountain Honey.