Internal space

[spookshow-girl.livejournal.com]

I found an excerpt from this book on the idea of "internal space". So it would seem it's not nearly as unheard of as people would like to imply.

Patients may report an internal architecture inhabited by alternate personalities, as in the following example:

All of the parts inside of me have rooms. Every room is different. My room is at the far end and there's more space between my door and the door next to me. Diana's room has walls made out of mahogany. She has three big huge windows and she looks out onto a garden. Um. Julia's room has bunk beds in it and a rug on the floor and teddy bears and dolls and stuff like that in it. Every room is different. (SCID-D Interview, unpublished transcript)

--Me

Comments

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

The concept goes quite a long way back, although the first popular accounts featuring an internal or subjective space were Milligan's and Chase's, then Kit Castle's in Katherine, It's Time (which is a simply ghastly book and ought to be burninated, IONSHO).

There is quite a lot about it in Robert Mayer's books. "Anna and Beth described their internal world as a beautiful, Tolkien-like (I despise that expression - Andy) Shangri-La with mountains, rivers, streams, valleys, wooded paths, caves, trees, and flowers. Most of the time it was sunny and pleasant, and the rain was always gentle and warm. The two alter personalities internally romped, lay in the sun, climbed trees, took walks. When they wanted to 'come out', they walked to one end of this paradise, wehre there was a gate to the real world."

"Colleen now believed she had more than a thousand internal [didn't come up front] personalities -- she tried to keep track of them on a large chart on a wall of her apartment -- who lived in what seemed like a fortified fairyland, complete with ornate castles. As Colleen looked around, she found more and more nooks and cranies, which she carefully categorized. She would take days off from work and spend them exploring the internal terrain."

George Ganaway had heard it so often by the mid1990s that he used it to imply that people who claimed multiplicity were merely playacting in a faddish way.

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

Personally, I'm always surprised when a multiple system, or at least a large-population one, is able to get along without any kind of subjective space. I know it happens, but I have some difficulty imagining how a large number of people get along without at least envisioning a space to interact in.

What always amazed me was that it was frequently therapists who were urging their clients to make a 'safe place inside' or individual rooms for everyone-- hell, we've even known singlets who were told to make a 'place inside'-- and then, when it turned out to be very complex and elaborate (leading me to wonder if they were making or just discovering it), the same therapists started to get on their cases for 'fantasizing.'

And Julian sez: "The concept of a world inside your mind or a parallel world where one could live a separate life is extremely old and has been used by writers since before George Ganaway was a twinkle in his daddy's eye."

[pthalo]

Yeah, I don't know how we'd manage with out it. Imagine all of us trying to crowd into the body and share some pens with only two hands to try to have a group meeting! *chuckle*

[kasiya-system.livejournal.com]

We've had to create a galaxy map with various sectors and solar systems just to try and keep track of things. The solar system maps contain planet and moon names along with the name of the stars they revolve around. Some even have the names of the capital cities on the capital world within each system. Other space objects like nebula, binary star systems, gates, nurseries, tunnels, splits, holes, et cetera, are listed as well. We even have some roaming planets that don't belong to any solar systems, and living beings the size of small planets that get mistaken as such in sensors. That can be funny.

[jadedmosaic.livejournal.com]

When Tiea was giving birth to her second daughter the Midwife said "now would be a good time to go to your happy place inside."" now Tiea keep breathing stay happy like what is around you inside, take in the inside and inside and PUSH OUT " ha ha I always thought that was funny it was like how do you stay there and PUSH out here? cause Tiea really believed the Nurse and kept going inside too her happy place and that left Toni outside PUSHING. They still fight over who the birth Mom is Tiea or Toni there soo stupid! Elaine

[fayanora.livejournal.com]

It is my growing belief that Mindeodean (the name for my subjective world), at least in part, is actually inside of my soul rather than in my mind.

[arhuaine.livejournal.com]

I had an "internal space" LONG before I knew there was anyone else sharing it with me. It started off as just one room, looking a bit like a cosy library in an old English house. As the years went by, my view of this place expanded, and now we have the whole house, (like a big English country house) complete with a couple of dozen acres of garden and parkland.

I also know at least one person who has such an internal space but is not, as far as anyone knows, multiple.

[pthalo]

ditto!

[jadedmosaic.livejournal.com]

Me too. I thought I was alone, till other geeky teens joined me , now its cool, although I dont recall inviting gthem to my world Thnx Elaine

[echoesnspectres.livejournal.com]

Yay for inner libraries!

[jaga-system-.livejournal.com]

I second that...third that...fourth that....

Three cheers for Libraries!!! Three cheers for BOOKS!!!

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

AMEN!

[jadedmosaic.livejournal.com]

hey your icon chic just winked at me yep she jsut did it again!! ha ha That is so sweet I want a winking icon? I want for people to se what I look like .I need a icon darst yep she winked again this si freaking me OUT! Too COOL Thnx Elaine

[jadedmosaic.livejournal.com]

sorry I type wierd when being freaked out

[draegonhawke.livejournal.com]

I've had an internal space after one fashion or another since elementary school, at least--at first it was a stunning (idyllic) landscape where I could go to meet with my mentors (a pair of male lions, Leo and Leont, charming fellows who were always there when I needed them and who I'm terrified I've outgrown), and since then it's expanded, shifted, changed--at the moment, it's terribly mutable, but it's been everything from a glade to a fortress to a cavern. I can't imagine not having one.

I want this book

[jadedmosaic.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link. This is the only book I've heard of that describes someones inner life so well and the arcitecture. I want this book but I see the authors last name is Speigal and my old T used to read a guy named Speigal who got everything real confussed for us, but this may not be the same guy , but I dunno because theres 2 Spiegal's who are Dr.s and they both work with people with Dissacoiative Disorder and have different views. They dont agree. Do you know weather the author is a doc or a "T" in some way.

Ihate this time of year the only way Tiea is springing for this book is if we all "gang" up on her and all put it individualy on our Christmas List for the grab bag.Maybe the Library could order it. Is this person inteviewing a mulitiple or a singlet? Thnx Elaine The Bratz Pac

Re: I want this book

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

Herbert Spiegel is the guy who gave an interview to the New York Times Review of Books in 1998 sneering about how he 'debunked' the Sybil case. This is apparently his entire claim to fame, and he has appeared on a few talk shows as the token skeptic, repeating the same lines. He is one of those people who believes multiplicity is all about self-hypnosis and that all of us are gullible, highly suggestible "Grade Fives" and "fantasy-prone personalities."

I wasn't convinced by his evidence against Sybil, either. Don't get me wrong, the book (and, even more so, the movie) is a sensationalistic exaggeration with many events probably totally invented for dramatic value, but several people who knew the real Shirley Mason said that she was really multiple, and remained so even after her therapy with Connie Wilbur (she said she "invited the others back" because she was lonely without them). Just because Wilbur had a lot of dubious and shady practices doesn't mean she coerced all her clients into multiplicity.

His son David Spiegel, who co-authored the book quoted from, does believe in multiplicity and has published a lot of papers, even though he thinks it's all dissociation and no one really has more than one personality, etc. We saw his office once when we were in therapy with someone at the Stanford clinic, although he was on the phone when we came by.

[fayanora.livejournal.com]

My internal space I've had all my life, LONG before I knew that my imaginary friends became real people in my mind once they were created. It's significantly more than a few rooms, though. More like hundreds of universes, each as rich and complex as the last ones. There's the Dark Playground, which I am only now fully exploring; there's The Eternal Prairie; Traipah, which I think is a remembered place; and many more.