(no subject)

[ghostwalker.livejournal.com]

Hey all. i don't post here often, mostly because i'm never sure what to say.

I'm certain this post will be rather incoherent. i'm running on zero sleep and my thoughts are a bit chaotic at the moment. Hard to put what i want to say in words. So i'll apologize in advance for my confusing/incoherent post.

Still in confusion about the whole DID/MPD/Multiples/Plurals thing. i mean i know the differences in them; i'm just not sure what i am. heh. my therp calls it DID because we're pretty sure i'm at least partially that. Soem of my Others were brought about by abuse/trauma and such. But soem within say that there are those who have always been there, inside, and aren't the same as them because they weren't "created" (for lack of a better word in my sleep.deprived state of mind) by abuse/trauma. So what does that make me? Can a person/people fall into more than one "category" (again, for lack of a better word).

i talked with my therp. about it, and he's not certain either. grand, hmm? Ah well. He says he'll help me figure it out if he can, and he's looking into websites and such on it. He has no personal experience with born Multiples or anything of that sort, but at least he's willing to help. He's grand and his sole intentions aren't just to integrate us, so yay for him.

i'm rambling so i shall end this now.

^v^Spooky^v^

Comments

[emploding.livejournal.com]

DID/MPD/Multiples/Plurals are the same thing .. different names.
in my experience, natural multiples tend to stick with mutliple or plural, because mpd/did sticks a 'disorder' lable, but you dont need to fall into any of those catogorys... they are just names. you can pick one, pick none, pick all, or pick any other yuo can think of.
they are just lables, and lables dont define people, or systems.

[ghostwalker.livejournal.com]

[luwana.livejournal.com]

Actually, DID and MPD are two different diagnosis. DID works very much on the theory that those inside you are not people, the very term itself was invented because of people's firm belief that there could only be one personality per body, that is how you are born and that is how you stay, type thing. It is simpley you thinking there is someone else there, when in fact there is not, there is only you. Hence the name.

MPD however, while I know slightly less about, runs on the theory that there are other personalities within you. Doctors who work with the MPD model are probably more likely to promote functionality, rather than constantly pimping integration. This term is, as far as I know, no longer a diagnosis in use in the USA. However, the 'world' organisations decided that it was indeed a real condition, so MPD is still used in many countries, with the (quite frankly, false) belief that DID is a 'synonym'.

Basically, they are different, but some places will tell you they are the same thing. It really depends on your shrink. Man I sound like a geek.

(As for multiplicity, I just see that as MPD without the D)

[tir-nan-og.livejournal.com]

Alas! There is no more MPD in the DSM, as I understand it. MPD switched to DID, based on shifts in the psychiatrists' perception of what we are, erroneous as it is.
What lead to the switch, I'm not so sure. There are those in this community who are very knowledgable about that.

[ghostwalker.livejournal.com]

[ninalyn.livejournal.com]

I'm not quite sure about this, but didn't the DSM-IV replace MPD with DID in its classification system? Perhaps, if that's what happened, someone managed to convince an overwhelming amount of people that it was more dissociation than more than one person to a body. I don't think both diagnoses are in the DSM-IV, just DID (I may be wrong, though. Ihaven't checked).

Just curious.
-Ally

[judiff]

actually the DSM is only specifc to the USA. I does get used a lot in other english speaking countires (like the UK where we are) but tecnically the rest of the world is using or at least should be using the ICD (international classification of diseases/disorder -i'm not sure which put together by the world health organisation) Sometime when i've got mte time i'll look up what the ICD saya about muliplicity and sdissosation but maybe someone else will beat me to it

[tir-nan-og.livejournal.com]

I'll bet we are viewed somewhat more sanely outside of the USA. At least, everything I've ever read about the autistic spectrum that I liked, that wasnt too rigid or dogmatic, has come from the UK.

[tir-nan-og.livejournal.com]

Yes, I have heard that this is the case. I believe I've heard the switch had to do with some kinds of excesses in the early nineties..many, many multiples coming out of the woodwork, some of whom were using multiplicity as an excuse for self-indulgent behaviors. (Selves-indulgent?) I think there were a lot of allegations about incest, some of which were recanted..but I have absolutely no idea how that worked. It sounds like there was a feeling of shock that multiplicity was that prominent, so it had to be pooh-poohed somehow.
The system to ask would be the Astrea System. They know all about this sort of thing. Obviously, I could use a brusher upper on the switch from MPD to DID myself.

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

The scandals and lawsuits you're referring to are described in this book:

Creating Hysteria (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0787947946/) by Joan Acocella

She erroneously concludes that no one has multiple personalities, that it is only a "cultural idiom of distress", a way of signalling that something else is wrong. However, she does have many valid points, including the connection between the overdiagnosis and SRA scandals, the religious right, and postfeminism.

Click here to read the first chapter (http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/a/acocella-hysteria.html)

Equal time: Click here for a rebuttal of Acocella's claims. (http://www.mediawatch.com/openseason.html)

[tir-nan-og.livejournal.com]

Many thanks! That was exactly the sort of background information that we needed.
Boy. A repulsive therapist described in a book with a repulsive main premise. What a can of worms.

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

Basically: DID means nobody -really- has more than one person inside them, they've just deluded themselves into thinking that they do. According to modern dogma, it supposedly reflects "a failure to form one core personality" (as if forming this one core personality is automatically natural and desirable and best for everyone).

As others have already pointed out, some doctors did an about-face in the 90s after some of the excesses of overdiagnosis, suddenly insisting that it was impossible for a single mind to contain more than one person (a conclusion not supported by any neurologists, or by psychologists who actually study personality, since there's no consensus on what a personality really is to begin with) and that the goal of therapy for a multiple should be not so much integration, per se, as to make them realize there was never more than one person-- it was just them deluding themselves into believing other parts of themselves were autonomous.

Are there people for whom this model really fits? We don't doubt that there are some, just as there are those for whom the Wilburian MPD model is an accurate model, and so DID (or MPD) may be a appropriate label for them. What we object to is the facile labeling of any body with more than one person as DID or MPD when no disordered characteristics impairing daily life are present. To us, this is a very important distinction. We've met other systems who don't care about it so much, but we ourselves are adamant as not being labeled as disordered.

Just because people in a system came to exist because of trauma doesn't necessarily make you MPD or DID either-- it is not about origins. It's about whether you can communicate and not experience significant impairments in daily functioning, really. It's perfectly possible for a system to have members with a wide variety of origins and not be disordered at all.