Where did this idea come from?

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

Reading through the earlier thread about the 'drama community', I found this from eridanusus, which got me thinking.

"They keep saying people can't talk to each other and stuff obviously they never even read Sybil or When Rabbit Howls or anything! Because they talk to each other in those. And don't they think if someone WAS gonna go "ooh I'm going to fake having multiple personalities" they'd actually do some research so they DIDN'T get it all wrong?"

Maybe I'm giving the wannabe 'experts' too much credit by assuming they've done any reading at all, rather than simply going on hearsay, but it's a good question. Where did the idea come from? 'Mutual unawareness of others' existence' is not and has never been in the diagnostic criteria for either MPD or DID. Even in some of the early 'dual personality' cases described (Mary Reynolds, and Gmelin's patient whose other self spoke fluent French), at least one person was aware of the other's existence, even if the awareness wasn't mutual.

What many of the popular and sensationalistic accounts *do* describe is a 'presenting self' who was unaware of the others and experienced the periods when they were controlling the body as blackouts, while the 'others,' when they were in charge, were not only aware of each other's existence but had varying levels of communication between themselves. Books like "Sybil" and "The Minds of Billy Milligan" give *extremely* clear descriptions of internal communication taking place between selves (i.e. Vicki telling Peggy to "put the dish down" when she wanted to break it). Even if the usual frontrunner knew nothing, that's still a pretty far cry from 'nobody can talk to anyone else.'

In fact, for a while, one of the things some doctors were *specifically* told to ask patients when evaluating for an MPD or DID diagnosis, was whether they 'heard voices.' (Granted, this is an extremely flimsy criterion on which to base the diagnosis-- one has to distinguish between the internal 'voices' that many multiples experience and auditory hallucinations-- but I think I've already made pretty clear my distrust of most professional ideas about multiplicity.)

Virtually every popular account of multiplicity published during the 80s and 90s ends with, if not integration, the attainment of at least some sort of communication between everyone. There were some books published during this time by-- yes, therapists with degrees-- with titles like "Working with the Family Inside" and "Internal Family Systems Therapy," which emphasized communication and awareness as a viable alternative to integration for some multiples. So, even supposing that only a portion of these more sensationalized cases were real, the claim that "in real multiplicity the personalities don't know about each other" still doesn't hang together. I'd take this more seriously if anyone could quote a single source, but no one seems to be able to.

So, where did 'they can't talk to each other' come from? I'm actually curious.

Comments

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

According to people who knew Shirley Mason (Sybil), the integration lasted only a few years. She 'let the others come back,' because she was lonely without them.

Heh, a couple of us have actually tentatively attempted writing our stories in fictionalised forms, with some names and details changed. One of them could actually be long enough to reach novel-length; we'll see how that goes. What I do remember is that ever since we were young, we would often take the names of people in here and use them for characters in stories. "How'd you come up with that name?" "Oh, just thought of it...."

[laurenthemself]

Ha. I always felt that the book didn't tell the whole story.

As for naming characters after system members, I have one lovely young lady here who has become a kind of quintessential Mary Sue, in that her name crops up in quite a few of my fan fictions if I need an original character for whatever reason. I write for a variety of fandoms, but it'd be interesting to see if any of my readers ever noticed...

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

The character-names in my interminable fantasy Saga aren't our names - they're Sindarin (Tolkien's Elvish), and like most Sindarin names, are actually descriptive titles: "Star-woman", "Shadowlord" and "First Sword" (which is a term from a totally non-Tolkienian fandom, and basically means "second in command".)

Kír doesn't think much of the Saga. He doesn't really favor fantasy, for one thing; for another, he doesn't care for the way I've portrayed 'his' character: too painfully accurate in some ways and too irritatingly inaccurate in others.

He also doesn't like it that the name Crist-Erui has 'stuck' to his twin, who has none of his own. What can I say; now that our wild, shy brother actually has some friends, they have to call him something, even if he doesn't answer to it. The name Kír isn't a real name either; it's a shortened form of what his twin calls him, the meaning of which we've never known. He chose that as his use-name because he didn't want people calling him Duathir.

Me, I don't care if people call me Jess, Jessadriel, Elenbarathi, Elen, or any of my assorted other nick-names, use-names or online handles. I do admit that the character Elenbarathi in my Saga is a "Mary Sue", if that term can apply to a non-fanfic character: she's *me* as I'd be if I were a 1500-year-old Elf of royal lineage, with incomparable healing powers and a whole lot of other magic. LOL, hey, I know it's vain and frivolous, but I figure when I'm writing for myself, I can write whatever I want. It really is just a story, after all.