Integration

[arimle.livejournal.com]

So I was thinking with Vendela the other day (while we were brushing our teeth) about integration; not that it's something we want for ourselves, but just thinking about the idea of integration in general. And V. brought up something I hadn't really thought of: How exactly does it happen?

I guess I imagined the therapist tapping you with a magic wand, or sprinkling magic dust on your head. I also have a vague idea that the old MPD school says that each inside person guards a specific traumatic memory or set of memories, and when those memories are incorporated into the core, then that person will also be incorporated into the core, or something along those lines. But somehow I imagine it doesn't always work that way? And is this why many "integrated" multiples end up dis-integrating?

I know the whole idea of integration is completely tied up in the idea of all people inside a multiple system all being parts of one core; I just want to know how, practically, old school therapists go about integrating their patients. The whole idea puzzles me.

Comments

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Their usual method of doing things, no doubt: i.e. brainwashing techniques... drugs, interrogation and indoctrination, a system of rewarding agreement with them and punishing disagreement, accompanied by varying degrees of confinement and coercion at their discretion.

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

From everything we have heard about Cornelia Wilbur, that is exactly how she did it. She had clients who would go around "Oh yes, I'm integrated" all the while they were switching right in front of you so you could see it.

[arimle.livejournal.com]

I figured as much.

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

I also have a vague idea that the old MPD school says that each inside person guards a specific traumatic memory or set of memories, and when those memories are incorporated into the core, then that person will also be incorporated into the core, or something along those lines.

That is essentially how the theory goes, yes-- that the only reason for others to exist in a body is to 'hold intolerable memories'; that it's a way for the 'core' to disown memories too painful for them by pawning them off onto someone else. The reasoning seemed to be along the lines that when the 'core' admitted the traumatic incident had actually happened to them, they would realize the person they had created to endure it wasn't really separate from them after all.

Unfortunately, this didn't explain why even in the MPD Classick cases, many of the supposed dissociated areas of memory went on to become complex people in their own right. Cornelia Wilbur rationalized it as "the core split off her other personality traits to them." This strikes me as counterproductive at best-- why would someone created merely for the purpose of enduring trauma be vested with the skills most important for the survival of the entire system in the world-at-large? Wouldn't it make more sense at least to say that the important personality traits were given to others for safekeeping, leaving the 'depleted core' to be the one to endure all the trauma, rather than the ones with the important abilities?

The classic integration theory also doesn't take into account the fact that the brain sets up different 'neural nets' for distinctive selves, and the longer they've been around-- the more a particular neural net becomes part of the brain's usual activities-- the more difficult it becomes to do anything apart from merely suppressing the 'unwanted' ones.

The whole process does sound rather 'magical' as you describe it. Most of the 'classic' MPD books will give you an account of how the system was supposedly integrated, but the dirty little secret is that many of the most famous cases didn't stay integrated and everyone who had regular contact with them knew it. Even in systems we've seen who feel that their people really were created for the purpose of holding trauma, we've personally only heard of one multiple whose integration lasted. (I often wonder, also, how many of the supposed integration success stories come from therapists identifying 'people' in a system who didn't actually exist-- they just labeled it as a new self every time you coughed funny.)


Gemma

[jinxtigr.livejournal.com]

Oooh, potentially lively topic ;)
I've spoken with one shrink who was integration-minded. What I think I'm seeing with that is an unstated assumption that one (!) cannot have parallel persons running inside a human brain. This is a natural assumption for a singlet to make but I don't see a functional reason for it to be so- to me, the fascinating thing is 'why am I NOT many people?' rather than 'how could a brain hold more than one person?'.
I think it's partly down to the Von Neumann model of processing- and even then, you can have multiple 'persons' on one processor, they just have to time-share. In the brain model, it's not Von Neumann- it's drastically parallel, and my guess is that the amount of activity is greater. Thought doesn't always show up on EEGs (see Oliver Sacks, 'Awakenings', the EEGs of post-encephelatic but awake and aware patients) but there might be a correlation.
As far as integrating, leave it to schizophrenics or people composed of literally fragments that are not complete or not people in their own right. I guess you'd have to ask the identities in question themselves. Truddi Chase's 'the woman' identity might be like that- someone who had no person-ness at all apart from what the others gave her. If everybody was that way it might make sense to talk integration, assuming the fragments did in fact function better together than apart. There's no reason to assume that either. Wellness has got to be the goal- it has to trump 'single-ness' in priority.