Based on what I remember from the 80s and 90s, I have to agree with this. Cutting and other self-mutilation connected with multiplicity was practically unheard of until the Bennet Braun and Colin Ross era. Then you couldn't stop'em.
It was part of the badge of membership in communities like alt.sexual.abuse.recovery, which had a heavy multiple membership, and alt.support.dissociation, which was a spinoff of a.s.a.r. devoted entirely to multiplicity. Or should I say MPD and DID. I'm not saying that these women didn't have anything really wrong, I'm saying that they did, and the self-harming was their way of signalling that something was wrong -- I often felt it meant they were frustrated, that despite spending many hours a week in therapy, their "T's" weren't getting it or listening to them.
I think it is sometimes a way of letting off steam when nobody is hearing you -- I've seen perfectly normal toddlers bite themselves out of rage that they couldn't express themselves in words in a way their parents understood.
I also know that cutting has become fashionable and stylish among Goths or those who consider themselves same. For some it is related to blood games which are a form of vampire play. And messing around with mediaeval torture devices and the like. Were they all traumatised as children? Perhaps.
The difficulty with judging any of this by whether or not people were traumatised as children is that most people have experienced some form of trauma in childhood. Life is still cruel and brutal, even with parents who try to be kind and give their kids a good life. Andy has a rant (http://www.astraeasweb.net/plural/ourtruth.html) on our web pages about sustaining trauma in daily life. If trauma caused people to split, everybody would be multiple.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2004-04-01 11:09 pm (UTC)It was part of the badge of membership in communities like alt.sexual.abuse.recovery, which had a heavy multiple membership, and alt.support.dissociation, which was a spinoff of a.s.a.r. devoted entirely to multiplicity. Or should I say MPD and DID. I'm not saying that these women didn't have anything really wrong, I'm saying that they did, and the self-harming was their way of signalling that something was wrong -- I often felt it meant they were frustrated, that despite spending many hours a week in therapy, their "T's" weren't getting it or listening to them.
I think it is sometimes a way of letting off steam when nobody is hearing you -- I've seen perfectly normal toddlers bite themselves out of rage that they couldn't express themselves in words in a way their parents understood.
I also know that cutting has become fashionable and stylish among Goths or those who consider themselves same. For some it is related to blood games which are a form of vampire play. And messing around with mediaeval torture devices and the like. Were they all traumatised as children? Perhaps.
The difficulty with judging any of this by whether or not people were traumatised as children is that most people have experienced some form of trauma in childhood. Life is still cruel and brutal, even with parents who try to be kind and give their kids a good life. Andy has a rant (http://www.astraeasweb.net/plural/ourtruth.html) on our web pages about sustaining trauma in daily life. If trauma caused people to split, everybody would be multiple.