the straight dope on multiplicity
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multiplicity_archivesi DON'T think.
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/031003.html
03-Oct-2003
031003.gifDear Cecil:
My wife and I are having a disagreement on whether multiple personality disorder is real or not. She works in a substance abuse clinic and says she sees people with this disorder quite often. I on the other hand feel that multiple personality disorder is a crock of dung. I have looked this up on the Internet, and views seem to be split fifty-fifty. What do you think--does this disorder exist? --Mark, via the Internet
Cecil replies:
Your columnist doubts it. Your columnist doubts everything. But in this case he's got a lot of company. Multiple personality disorder, now officially known as dissociative identity disorder (DID), remains the object of bitter controversy. One thing's clear, though--it's not nearly as common as people thought just a few years ago.
Possible cases of split personality have been reported in the medical literature since the early 19th century, and the condition was formally defined in the first years of the 20th. But until recently it was considered extremely rare--fewer than 200 cases were described before 1980. The diagnosis became much more common in the 80s for several reasons. One was the phenomenal popularity of Flora Schreiber's 1973 book Sybil, which told of a woman with 16 personalities. Stories of "multiples," fictionalized or otherwise, were nothing new--The Three Faces of Eve dates from 1954, "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" from way back in 1886--but Sybil made a crucial innovation, introducing the idea that multiple personalities stemmed from trauma during early childhood. Around the same time, child protection advocates and feminists began arguing that child abuse, especially sexual abuse, occurred far more often than previously supposed. And in the late 70s, in a phenomenon thought to be linked to the resurgence of Christian fundamentalism, reports of so-called satanic ritual abuse first captured the public's imagination.
Presented with, on one hand, allegations of an unrecognized epidemic of crimes against innocents and, on the other, a simple mechanism to explain why their troubled patients couldn't remember any abuse (i.e., the personality divides in order to shield itself from horrific memories), a small but devoted group of therapists began diagnosing multiple personality disorder with alarming frequency--more than 20,000 cases had been reported by 1990. Under the influence of hypnosis and other techniques, subjects reported dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of "alters" whose behavior, age, sex, language, and occasionally species differed from that of their everyday personas. Alters were coaxed into revealing bloodcurdling stories of abuse by family members, or of sacrificing their own babies to shadowy cults. One prominent multiple personality specialist claimed that the satanic network programmed alters into its victims, which it could then trigger to act in certain ways by sending them color-coded flowers.
By the early 1990s it began to dawn on rational folk just how preposterous the whole business was. Having investigated more than 12,000 accusations over four years, researchers at the University of California, Davis, and the University of Illinois at Chicago determined that not a single case of satanic ritual abuse had been substantiated. A 1992 FBI study arrived at the same conclusion: overeager therapists had planted horror stories in the minds of their patients. In 1998 psychologist Robert Rieber made a convincing case, based on an analysis of audiotapes, that even the famous Sybil had confabulated her multiple personalities at the insistence of her therapist. The bubble burst, and diagnoses of multiple personalities subsided.
OK, so it was all a case of mass hysteria. The question remains: Are multiple personalities ever real? The debate still rages. Skeptics claim that alters are invariably induced by the therapist; the more respectable defenders of DID agree that many are, but not all. The controversy has been complicated by disagreement over the nature of personality. The common understanding of DID is that the alters are independent of one another and don't share memories and other cognitive processes, but demonstrating this has proven difficult. Speech and behavior are under conscious control, so changes can readily be faked. Even things like brain-wave patterns may vary not because of a genuine personality switch but because alleged alters cultivate different emotional states and different ways of acting out. In a recent study of several DID patients, successive alters were asked to memorize different sets of words. When alter B was asked whether she recognized a word memorized only by alter A, she often hesitated. That suggests a conscious process--I'm not supposed to know this--indicating the personalities aren't truly independent.
Research continues, but my feeling is this. Assuming that the diagnoses of the past 25 years were trumped-up and that the couple hundred cases reported between 1800 and 1979 represent the true incidence of the syndrome, we're talking about maybe one or two cases per year. If DID is as rare as all that, what's the big deal?
--CECIL ADAMS
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/031003.html
03-Oct-2003
031003.gifDear Cecil:
My wife and I are having a disagreement on whether multiple personality disorder is real or not. She works in a substance abuse clinic and says she sees people with this disorder quite often. I on the other hand feel that multiple personality disorder is a crock of dung. I have looked this up on the Internet, and views seem to be split fifty-fifty. What do you think--does this disorder exist? --Mark, via the Internet
Cecil replies:
Your columnist doubts it. Your columnist doubts everything. But in this case he's got a lot of company. Multiple personality disorder, now officially known as dissociative identity disorder (DID), remains the object of bitter controversy. One thing's clear, though--it's not nearly as common as people thought just a few years ago.
Possible cases of split personality have been reported in the medical literature since the early 19th century, and the condition was formally defined in the first years of the 20th. But until recently it was considered extremely rare--fewer than 200 cases were described before 1980. The diagnosis became much more common in the 80s for several reasons. One was the phenomenal popularity of Flora Schreiber's 1973 book Sybil, which told of a woman with 16 personalities. Stories of "multiples," fictionalized or otherwise, were nothing new--The Three Faces of Eve dates from 1954, "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" from way back in 1886--but Sybil made a crucial innovation, introducing the idea that multiple personalities stemmed from trauma during early childhood. Around the same time, child protection advocates and feminists began arguing that child abuse, especially sexual abuse, occurred far more often than previously supposed. And in the late 70s, in a phenomenon thought to be linked to the resurgence of Christian fundamentalism, reports of so-called satanic ritual abuse first captured the public's imagination.
Presented with, on one hand, allegations of an unrecognized epidemic of crimes against innocents and, on the other, a simple mechanism to explain why their troubled patients couldn't remember any abuse (i.e., the personality divides in order to shield itself from horrific memories), a small but devoted group of therapists began diagnosing multiple personality disorder with alarming frequency--more than 20,000 cases had been reported by 1990. Under the influence of hypnosis and other techniques, subjects reported dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of "alters" whose behavior, age, sex, language, and occasionally species differed from that of their everyday personas. Alters were coaxed into revealing bloodcurdling stories of abuse by family members, or of sacrificing their own babies to shadowy cults. One prominent multiple personality specialist claimed that the satanic network programmed alters into its victims, which it could then trigger to act in certain ways by sending them color-coded flowers.
By the early 1990s it began to dawn on rational folk just how preposterous the whole business was. Having investigated more than 12,000 accusations over four years, researchers at the University of California, Davis, and the University of Illinois at Chicago determined that not a single case of satanic ritual abuse had been substantiated. A 1992 FBI study arrived at the same conclusion: overeager therapists had planted horror stories in the minds of their patients. In 1998 psychologist Robert Rieber made a convincing case, based on an analysis of audiotapes, that even the famous Sybil had confabulated her multiple personalities at the insistence of her therapist. The bubble burst, and diagnoses of multiple personalities subsided.
OK, so it was all a case of mass hysteria. The question remains: Are multiple personalities ever real? The debate still rages. Skeptics claim that alters are invariably induced by the therapist; the more respectable defenders of DID agree that many are, but not all. The controversy has been complicated by disagreement over the nature of personality. The common understanding of DID is that the alters are independent of one another and don't share memories and other cognitive processes, but demonstrating this has proven difficult. Speech and behavior are under conscious control, so changes can readily be faked. Even things like brain-wave patterns may vary not because of a genuine personality switch but because alleged alters cultivate different emotional states and different ways of acting out. In a recent study of several DID patients, successive alters were asked to memorize different sets of words. When alter B was asked whether she recognized a word memorized only by alter A, she often hesitated. That suggests a conscious process--I'm not supposed to know this--indicating the personalities aren't truly independent.
Research continues, but my feeling is this. Assuming that the diagnoses of the past 25 years were trumped-up and that the couple hundred cases reported between 1800 and 1979 represent the true incidence of the syndrome, we're talking about maybe one or two cases per year. If DID is as rare as all that, what's the big deal?
--CECIL ADAMS
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no subject
Date: 2003-10-06 01:18 pm (UTC)Our only comment was that we'd like representation. One line: not all multiples have MPD, they live normal lives without any of the excesses seen in the media.
no subject
Date: 2003-10-06 01:35 pm (UTC)Multiple Personalities <> Multiple Personality *Disorder*...
And, it's interesting that from personal observation, the moment it is "figured out" what is going on, things seem to get better. =) (for us, at least, anyway).
Which might explain why... well.. for us anyway, we've started calling ourselves "Multiple Personality *Ordered*" =) (or MPO, eh? ;) )
C.
no subject
Date: 2003-10-06 03:04 pm (UTC)Real to whom???
Y'know, this is a thing I don't *get*: why do people persist in thinking there's some arbitrary, external "standard" of reality that's the same for everyone? Why do they ask someone else to tell them whether or not something is real?
As far as I've been able to determine, if one asks people who ARE multiple whether or not it's real, the majority of them say "yes"; the rest say "I don't know". I have not heard of any who say "No, it's not, it's just a game I play".
Now, if a person is having so much difficulty with losing time, acting "uncharacteristically", being unable to maintain a structured life, etc. that he or she goes to a doctor and pays a lot of money in hopes of getting some help... doesn't that indicate that there's something real causing the problems? If the person says "Doctor, I'm having trouble coping because there's more than one 'me' in this body; some of us are confused or less-than-competent, and we don't cooperate or share information effectively"... what reason is there to doubt this? Why on earth would a person go to a doctor and make such a statement if it was not true?
I think the problem lies in the "Disorder" label. One could say a family who didn't cooperate or communicate effectively was disordered, but the disorder would not be that they were a family, and the goal of treatment would not be to kick all but one person out of the house. Why is it different for people sharing a body?
Y'know, autism was formerly thought to be pretty rare, just because the definition of autism only covered people who were having certain specific, severe problems because of it. Everybody else slipped under the wire. I still don't tell a lot of people I'm autistic, because the "cultural image" of autism is Rain Man, and I get pissed off at the assumption that I'm retarded, disordered, not competent to manage my own life. I tell hardly anyone that there's more than one of me, because the "cultural image" of it is Sybil and When Rabbit Howls, and I don't want to deal with the assumption that I'm a crazed victim of severe sexual abuse in early childhood. I'm not.
*grins* I'm a perfectly normal autistic Otherkin multiple, with a house, a car, a good job, a lot of friends, and a teenage daughter who's happy and doing well. I like my life; things are the way I want them to be for the most part. The different people I am care for one another and try hard to be considerate of each other's needs, preferences and opinions. I have my difficulties, of course, but I can cope with them. I reject the notion that I am "disordered"; I think the observable facts about my life are more than sufficient to discredit it.
"Speech and behavior are under conscious control, so changes can readily be faked."
... LOL, yes, it's true. I've spent my whole life trying to 'pass' as a normal, single, neurotypical person, with a fair degree of success. The one of me who couldn't possibly pass for "human normal" doesn't deal with other people; the rest work together to maintain an acceptable public persona - which is in fact faked, constructed to a very large extent from models in books because I have no first-hand knowledge of what it's like to be human-normal.
Why would I ever want to admit this to a doctor, though? All THAT would accomplish would be to get me labeled as either "crazy" or "liar". I should pay good money for this??? Ha, I think not!
no subject
Date: 2003-10-07 06:23 pm (UTC)Y'know, autism was formerly thought to be pretty rare, just because the definition of autism only covered people who were having certain specific, severe problems because of it. Everybody else slipped under the wire. I still don't tell a lot of people I'm autistic, because the "cultural image" of autism is Rain Man, and I get pissed off at the assumption that I'm retarded, disordered, not competent to manage my own life.
Oh, no kidding. People think either Dustin Hoffman in "Rain Man" or some kid bashing their head against the wall. "YOU'RE autistic? I had no idea, you can't be, I have a cousin/nephew/etc. who's autistic and he doesn't talk." We got told by our own family that we were "copping out" and trying to make an excuse for academic and social failure-- needless to say, they didn't believe us (except our grandma, who doesn't spread it around). People assume you're a savant (usually a mathematical genius), incapable of understanding or experiencing 'normal' human emotions, incapable of love or having relationships-- so yeah, in a nutshell, we relate. Sigh.
Shiu
no subject
Date: 2003-10-07 11:49 pm (UTC)Argh. Rain Man. Good movie, but screwed us autistics over. I'm High-Functioning Autistic (Aspergers) and that's part of the reason I wasn't diagnosed with autism for eighteen years, 'cause people think of autism like that (my own mother dismissed the possibility because I didn't act like a mentally deficient alien).
Sorry. Just had to butt in. ^^;;
no subject
Date: 2006-07-05 06:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-10-06 07:59 pm (UTC)for us... we never heard of the three faces of eve or sybil or anything about multiplicity except for hearing it as a vague idea and concept in a highschool or college psychology class that was required.
we only started accepting that label after much introspection and consideration and developement of a semi-coherant system to understand us all. i didn't even find out about these things or the way it was sorta a trend for a while or any of the background stuff that is normall blamed for fakers until after i had come to the conclusion that i was multiple. so... i don't see that as so much an issue really.
besides, who, after seeing a movie or one of those representations of multiples as a disorder would ever even /consider/ wanting to pretend to be one? if someone is faking it then i think they are probably even more messed up in the head than i am if they think they /want/ this.
really... there are so many times when i am dealing with friends... especially the few times i've been in love but have felt like it would be impossible for someone to love me back. its not that i /want/ to be like this. its just the way i /am/. sometimes i wish i /was/ a fake and sometimes i'm glad i'm not but either way to suggest that this entire idea is something that i'm faking and want to be the case is ridiculous. its when i'm trying to act "normal" that i'm faking.
i think i speak for all of us when i say this.
~myorp
no subject
Date: 2003-10-06 08:56 pm (UTC)... yeah. *sad sigh* I told my first husband, but he used the information to try to manipulate me. I never told my second husband, and it was an ongoing problem. How does one explain "I don't want to have sex with you now because I'm currently a guy"? Or "I wasn't giving you the silent treatment; the person I was yesterday doesn't talk"? Worse yet, how about "My brother, who's the one who doesn't talk, would like to have sex with you, but doesn't want to be treated as a girl"...
... nope nope. It's just too complicated.
no subject
Date: 2003-10-11 12:44 pm (UTC)Of course, if you need to get rid of an annoying date who simply won't let you go, you can always get one of your more warped Krew (you know you have at least one you ry not to let out in public) up there to have a chat with them...
I just got rid of an idiot the other night that way. I got sick of listening to endless babbling monologues about her ridiculous political bliefs, how hot various movie stars were, and how much she hoped some guy would call her and sweep her off her feet. So I let Ray talk to her for a while. He gleefuly mentioned that Callisto from Xena would be the first guest-corpse on "Tru Calling" (a new show about a girl who works in the morgue and relives her clients' last days so she can save their lives) and how gorgeous he thinks she is (along with most of Us). She started getting all bitter -- apparently she's allowed to drool all she wants but how DARE I do any drooling over anyone but her -- and trying to get back to who SHE thinks is hot, so Ray dropped one of his best lines in history:
"Yep, she's all nekkid and in a morgue locker... Mmmmmmmmm..."
Next thing We know, she says "OK, bye. I'm going to bed" and her Yahoo status has changed to "Sleeping -- Get away from me you nocturnal freak!"
no subject
Date: 2003-10-06 09:25 pm (UTC)Personally, I have never blamed anything on any alter, just to avoid trouble. I have taken the flack for many acts that I personally know were NOT of my own doing, but the way I see it, if I am to share this body, then I must share the blame for everything that may happen.
I have emerged from a blackout state to find myself in a restaurant in a strange town at a table full of people I didn't know. What do you do? Try to bluff your way through the rest of lunch, hug people goodbye like you like them, then try to find out where the hell you are and how you arrived there.
Does Dissociative Identity Disorder really exist? You bet your ass it does.
no subject
Date: 2003-10-07 03:28 am (UTC)Hear, hear. That's why we signed our In Essence (http://www.angelfire.com/ia/mshadow/in_essence.htm) pledge. We felt it was an important commitment for us, to vow to never let our plural existence become an excuse for us to behave knowingly in an unacceptable way.
No matter what happens, it's our responsibility to discover and maintain a system of regulation, and accept the body's consequences for the actions any of us may take. Whatever that means, whether it's just setting up a means of internal communication, or 'sharing' the time out front equally, or reading up on multiplicity, or even going to therapy.
We found commiting to sign it a very bonding 'we're all in this together' kind of experience. :o) I think more of us will sign as we find more in our system, since we're only early on in discovering and meeting each other, and right now we're not hugely internally co-conscious.
no subject
Date: 2003-10-07 09:06 pm (UTC)~Sammie
no subject
Date: 2003-10-07 08:57 am (UTC)How do you decide when someone's 'pretending? Is everyone who wasn't diagnosed by the high and mighty professional just pretending? Or maybe it's only the people that *gasp* prefer being multiple and don't want to be 'cured'?
no subject
Date: 2003-10-07 09:03 pm (UTC)I don't believe web sites are necessarily a bad thing, particularly when they are supportive and/or informative. When we first discover that "not everyone" is this way, it CAN be frieghtening. I have found many very good web pages with information and help.
How do *I* decide when someone is pretending? I don't. I don't believe any one person is equipped to judge another in that way. Of a certainty, if someone stated they were multiple, then I later caught them in some lie about it, I would judge them a liar.
Many multiples (myself included) have chosen to remain as we are and not opt for a "cure." I do not believve being a multiple (at least in my own case) is derogatory or life threatening, so why try to "fix" it?
Thanks for the opportunity to clarify my position :)
no subject
Date: 2003-10-07 10:44 pm (UTC)As far as "using it for gain", anyone who's written a book about their multiplicity (Truddi Chase, for example, or Madison Clell) is using it for gain, and they don't seem to be flaunting so much as desiring to educate the public through relating personal experience as well as making a few bucks. On the other hand, there's always Judy Castelli.
madison clell
Date: 2003-10-08 12:00 am (UTC)just to play what isn't really devil's advocate for a minute.
no subject
Date: 2003-10-08 01:53 am (UTC)I can't honestly say I would agree that writing a book of one's own life experiences would be using their diagnosis for gain. While they may make some financial gain from it, in some cases it would appear that it was more educational than for entertainment. I was personally NOT entertained or enlightened by the Truddi Chase book.
no subject
Date: 2003-10-08 05:27 am (UTC)Yes, you are wrong. Poseurship is a word, and I've seen it used before.
Since the word poseur means a pretender, how then could a diagnosed multiple be a pretender?
Because gee, golly! Who EVER heard of a therapist getting a diagnosis wrong?
Multiplicity does not come from a diagnosis. Rather, a diagnosis does not confer multiplicity upon someone. It's merely a label used for insurance purposes. A diagnosed multiple could perfectly well be a pretender, especially if it were a criminal whose defense attorney was trying to use 'his violent alter did it' to get him off the hook, or someone who'd found some kind of refuge in the 'sick' role suggested by multiplicity, of being helpless and requiring re-parenting from a therapist, and taking the idea of their 'inner child' a little too far, naming parts of themselves and calling them 'different alters.'
Like Astraea said in another thread, it's not easy to fake something 24/7, and the mask will crack eventually, but for an hourlong therapist session, sure, it's easy to play out the act, if it's a venue for you to solicit attention and affection. There ARE people who do this. I am not condemning all multiples who go to therapy-- we go to therapy for depression/anxiety issues-- but I have seen an awful lot of people who seem to have convinced themselves they're multiple because it gives them an excuse to be nurtured by their therapist.
Shiu
no subject
Date: 2003-10-11 12:50 pm (UTC)I've known plenty of people claiming to be plenty of things, complete with "real" diagnoses. Hell, I had three roommates who were all scamming disability based on running con games on their headshrinkers -- and not only admitted it, but explained HOW they did it. They'd read in a psych book what the criteria were for a depression diagnosis, then went to a doc they figured was a softie, got their precious diagnosis, and started collecting checks. The reality of the situation was they were just too lazy to work for a living.
no subject
Date: 2003-10-11 07:20 pm (UTC)I worked all my life, and fought tooth and nail against my doctor telling me I needed to stop working or risk my health to the point of loss of life. Still I fought. When I finally got to the disability office, I sat there in the case worker's office crying my eyes out because I didn't "want" to be disabled.
Still, every day I want to get up and go to work. I want to earn the same 43,000 a year I was earning. I want to be able to fold a load of laundry without having to lie down afterwards. I can not understand why a person would want to pretend to such a rotten fate.
no subject
Date: 2003-10-11 08:10 pm (UTC)You know, that was the truly hilarious part about these losers. Their vaunted disability checks (the ones they were so proud of scamming) were like $500 a month. One of them (Dave) was actually livid when he found out My $8.00 an hour temp job gave Me $200 or $300 takehome for a week (it was a weird schedule with a 36 hour week followed by a 48 hour week). Apparently it was "wrong" that someone working for a living should make as much in 2 weeks as he was stealing in a month.
And yes, they were also losers of the "I'll do anything I want, screw over anyone I want, and then claim 'but I'm disabled' when I get caught" stripe.
no subject
Date: 2003-10-12 09:32 am (UTC)But yeah what amuses me is that often the people who are pinpointed _inside_ the multiple community as "posing" are the ones who are actually out there in the workforce or whatever, because they're not sick enough. _Outside_ people are not likely to care unless it's a court case or a disability case or whatever. :)
no subject
Date: 2003-10-12 02:09 pm (UTC)The roommates I mentioned above claimed I was faking for almost exactly that reason. What it came down to was I was working more than full time in a pretty hardcore job (12 1/2-hour shifts in a foundry 7 days every 2 weeks), and yet I had something these idiots decided was "more severe" than depression (always followed by "assuming he isn't faking, of course" and rolling of the eyes). So therefore, if I was still capable of working with a worse disorder than them, I was PROVING their scam as a lie, so therefore I HAD to be faking. Otherwise they'd have to admit they were being lazy and useless and have to get off their asses and work for a living.
"_Outside_ people are not likely to care unless it's a court case or a disability case or whatever"
OR you have a REALLY funny story about your Krew... LOL
no subject
Date: 2003-10-17 12:55 pm (UTC)It is really hard to quantify pain or distress in terms of 'ability to work.'
no subject
Date: 2003-10-09 10:51 am (UTC)How do faking people, assuming said exist, make it hard for you? They don't make it particularly hard for me, except when they hit national media.
no subject
Date: 2006-07-05 06:38 am (UTC)Doh.
no subject
Date: 2003-10-06 09:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-10-13 09:47 am (UTC)The amount of people who have said (re:my depression or anything related to my PTSD symptoms) to "just get over it", or look at me in that suspicious sort of way that says "I don't really believe you", or feel the need to tell them the troubles they've had and how "they don't go around whinging about it/looking for sympathy"...
Somehow some people think that anyone who retains any kind of emotional trauma is looking for attention, is too 'soft' or they just think that PTSD or depression is some kind of minor 'blueness', rather than being just as valid a condition as anything physically painful.
no subject
Date: 2003-10-13 03:47 pm (UTC)Thinking you are somehow at fault for the crimes perpetrated against you as a helpless child must be almost as bad as the crimes themselves. It's too bad the counselors don't start addressing some of those problems. Perhaps then the mental health community would stop medicating things and begin healing them.
no subject
Date: 2003-10-07 07:14 am (UTC)~sigh~
Cerys
FWIW this is what we sent:
Date: 2003-10-07 06:01 pm (UTC)associated with multiple personality. As you may be aware, a very small
amount of investigation has been done into cases of multiplicity which
were not abuse-created.
As you correctly point out, the idea of multiple personality as a mental
disorder caused by child abuse gained popularity due to the theories of
Cornelia Wilbur (therapist of Shirley Mason, aka "Sybil") and the
publicity of a subset of the feminist community, who pointed to the
existence of multiplicity as 'evidence' of the widespread nature of
sexual abuse. The Satanic abuse angle was added in the early 80s, and
came directly from the propaganda of certain Christian fundamentalist
groups.
Actually, some of the most recent investigations into multiple
personality have proceeded from the assumption that it occurs naturally
in a certain percentage of the population, and is possibly a
neurological trait like left-handedness. The UK magazine New Scientist
(9/13/03 issue)
recently ran an article theorizing that some people may be born with an
intrinsic predisposition towards multiplicity, which may be triggered by
trauma, but which can develop even in the absence of any abuse or
trauma.
How do conceptions of multiplicity as a natural phenomenon differ from
earlier, faddish clinical conceptions of DID? Well, to begin with, the
vast
majority of natural multiples studied do not experience multiple
personality as a disorder, and are perfectly functional in everyday
life. In contrast to the DID model, which posits that different
selves-- or 'alters,' in the clinical terminology-- have no awareness of
each other or continuity of memory, most functional multiples report
being able to share memory between selves and talk to one
another at will, although they may have markedly different personality
traits and even physical reactions. Apparently, exclusivity of memory
is not synonymous with exclusivity of identity.
As for my own experience: I am not a psychologist or psychiatrist, or
any kind of mental health professional, but I am a member of a natural
'system' (the term preferred by most natural multiples we know of). We
have never been diagnosed with MPD, but we have also never needed
therapy simply for being multiple, or experienced problems because of
it. We go to school and have successfully held down
a number of jobs and dealt with the various gripes of a rather mundane
life.
Interestingly, we co-run a page about natural/functional
multiplicity, and have heard from several 'in the closet' multiples--
ranging from psychologists and scientists to lawyers and engineers-- who
are afraid to publically admit to being multiple due to the public's
perception of it as a mental illness.
'Now wait a minute,' people are likely to ask, 'if functional
multiplicity is so common, how come psychologists see so few cases of
it?' Simple enough-- if they're functional and doing well in life, and
have no difficulty communicating and sharing memories, why do they need
to see a therapist?
They've avoided coming to public attention by keeping a low profile. At
this point, most healthy multiples have more to lose than to gain by
coming out. Admitting they're multiple would mean a loss of credibility
at best-- being perceived as 'sick,' out for attention, or gullible
victims of a mass hysteria-- or, at worse, possibly losing their job,
having their children taken away, or involuntary commitment to
psychiatric hospitals. In a high-profile, high-status job, who would
want to risk taking that kind of fall by admitting being multiple? No
one sane-- that's for sure.
letter cont'd (because it went over the word limit)
Date: 2003-10-07 06:02 pm (UTC)Some of us are working to change this, by debunking old myths about
multiplicity and what it means to be multiple-- we've run into a
remarkable number of multiples, for instance, who initially believed
their different selves couldn't 'really' be separate people because they
didn't experience 'blackouts' of time and could share memories.
The way I see it is, in order to truly disprove the idea that people in
multiple personality systems are seperate individuals, first you need to
establish a definition of what exactly a person IS-- something even
neurologists can't agree on. So if having many selves helps one make
sense of one's life, function better, and feels more natural than trying
to live life as a single person-- in short, results in being
psychologically healthier overall, as it did for us-- this would suggest
to me, via Occam's Razor, that multiplicity really is natural and the
best way of life for some people, and that the 'alters' are indeed
different people, who can live and cooperate just like any other group
of individuals, the only difference being that they share the same body.
Thanks,
Shiu for Amorpha system
Re: letter cont'd (because it went over the word limit)
Date: 2003-10-11 12:53 pm (UTC)