Are Multiple Personalities Always a Disorder?
June 8, 2015 12:37 AM Subscribe
Their vocabulary is extensive, but the most basic concepts are these: A "multiplicity system" refers to the group within the body itself (i.e., "I'm part of a multiplicity system"). The system might consist of two people, or it might consist of 200. The "outer world" is this physical plane that we're all stumbling around in, while "inner worlds" are the subjective realms where their system members spend time when they're not "fronting," or running the body in the outer world. When I speak to Falah, she is fronting, not Lark.For Vice Tori Telfer looks into the multiplicity activist movement, people who feel they don't so much have a multiple personality disorder/Dissociative Identity Disorder as consist of multiple personalities.
Blindsight by Peter Watts features an exemplar of the multiplicity rights movement in Susan "The Gang" James, a linguist purposely engineered to run multiple personalities to better decipher alien languages. Her -- their -- take on the phenomenon is haunting:
"We were probably fractured during most of our evolution," James once told me, back when we were all still getting acquainted. She tapped her temple. "There's a lot of room up here; a modern brain can run dozens of sentient cores without getting too crowded. And parallel multitasking has obvious survival advantages."posted by Rhaomi at 1:11 AM on June 8, 2015 [20 favorites]
I nodded. "Ten heads are better than one."
"Our integration may have actually occurred quite recently. Some experts think we can still revert to multiples under the right circumstances."
"Well, of course. You're living proof."
She shook their head. "I'm not talking about physical partitioning. We're the state of the art, certainly, but theoretically surgery isn't even necessary. Simple stress could do something like it, if it was strong enough. If it happened early in childhood."
"No kidding."
"Well, in theory," James admitted, and changed into Sascha who said, "Bullshit in theory. There's documented cases as recently as fifty years ago. [...] People were fucking barbarians about multicores back then—called it a disorder, treated it like some kind of disease. And their idea of a cure was to keep one of the cores and murder all the others. Not that they called it murder, of course. They called it integration or some shit. That's what people did back then: created other people to suck up all the abuse and torture, then got rid of them when they weren't needed any more."
[...]
Sascha was right; there'd been a time when MCC was MPD, a Disorder rather than a Complex, and it had never been induced deliberately. According to the experts of that time, multiple personalities arose spontaneously from unimaginable cauldrons of abuse—fragmentary personae offered up to suffer rapes and beatings while the child behind took to some unknowable sanctuary in the folds of the brain. It was both survival strategy and ritual self-sacrifice: powerless souls hacking themselves to pieces, offering up quivering chunks of self in the desperate hope that the vengeful gods called Mom or Dad might not be insatiable.
None of it had been real, as it turned out. Or at least, none of it had been confirmed. The experts of the day had been little more than witch doctors dancing through improvised rituals: meandering free-form interviews full of leading questions and nonverbal cues, scavenger hunts through regurgitated childhoods. Sometimes a shot of lithium or haloperidol when the beads and rattles didn't work. The technology to map minds was barely off the ground; the technology to edit them was years away. So the therapists and psychiatrists poked at their victims and invented names for things they didn't understand, and argued over the shrines of Freud and Klein and the old Astrologers. Doing their very best to sound like practitioners of Science.
Inevitably, it was Science that turned them all into road kill; MPD was a half-forgotten fad even before the advent of synaptic rewiring. But alter was a word from that time, and its resonance had persisted. Among those who remembered the tale, alter was codespeak for betrayal and human sacrifice. Alter meant cannon fodder.
Imagining the topology of the Gang's coexisting souls, I could see why Sascha embraced the mythology. I could see why Susan let her. After all, there was nothing implausible about the concept; the Gang's very existence proved that much. And when you've been peeled off from a pre-existing entity, sculpted from nonexistence straight into adulthood—a mere fragment of personhood, without even a full-time body to call your own—you can be forgiven a certain amount of anger. Sure you're all equal, all in it together. Sure, no persona is better than any other. Susan's still the only one with a surname.
Better to direct that resentment at old grudges, real or imagined; less problematic, at least, than taking it out on someone who shares the same flesh.
The best way to understand a system is to watch it fail. Under extreme stress, the human mind reverts to earlier, younger states. Which is interesting, because it implies there's something to revert to.
posted by effugas at 1:28 AM on June 8, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by effugas at 1:28 AM on June 8, 2015 [2 favorites]
There's no doubt DID is a thing. Whether it's what people who've got it think it is, is very much another matter.
posted by Segundus at 1:53 AM on June 8, 2015 [6 favorites]
posted by Segundus at 1:53 AM on June 8, 2015 [6 favorites]
I like this and am glad to read about it. When I read Matt Ruff's Set This House in Order, it kind of had me thinking about this general concept. I feel like when dealing with mental health issues we are still in the stone age, and imagine that people in two generations are going to judge us as being completely barbarous. I mean why are people so crummy to each other?
But when a disorder of the inner ear forced Miakoda and her system to leave that job, her employer denied them unemployment benefits. "After working there for five years, he insisted that a multiple couldn't possibly hold a job," she says.
Ugh. I know I shouldn't be surprised by this, but I still am.
posted by Literaryhero at 1:58 AM on June 8, 2015 [3 favorites]
But when a disorder of the inner ear forced Miakoda and her system to leave that job, her employer denied them unemployment benefits. "After working there for five years, he insisted that a multiple couldn't possibly hold a job," she says.
Ugh. I know I shouldn't be surprised by this, but I still am.
posted by Literaryhero at 1:58 AM on June 8, 2015 [3 favorites]
I don't know what to make of this, and I don't mean the following to be disrespectful. But my eye got really stuck on this paragraph:
For a long time, Jazz wasn't openly multiple, because the person fronting her system was a woman named Debbie. "Debbie was scared of the idea of multiplicity," says Jazz. "She didn't want to have anything to do with it. All she knew was what this society had been cramming down her throat for her entire life: That multiplicity is sick, horrible; that you can't be that way. And she just wasn't around long enough to learn differently." Eventually, Debbie died—one person inside a still-living body.
So, was Debbie the personality most of us would call the "real" person in this system? Because if so, that sounds like the ending of a horror story to me. The original personality being terrified of her other personalities and struggling to suppress them, and then perishing while the other personalities take over her body and go on living without her.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 2:07 AM on June 8, 2015 [36 favorites]
For a long time, Jazz wasn't openly multiple, because the person fronting her system was a woman named Debbie. "Debbie was scared of the idea of multiplicity," says Jazz. "She didn't want to have anything to do with it. All she knew was what this society had been cramming down her throat for her entire life: That multiplicity is sick, horrible; that you can't be that way. And she just wasn't around long enough to learn differently." Eventually, Debbie died—one person inside a still-living body.
So, was Debbie the personality most of us would call the "real" person in this system? Because if so, that sounds like the ending of a horror story to me. The original personality being terrified of her other personalities and struggling to suppress them, and then perishing while the other personalities take over her body and go on living without her.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 2:07 AM on June 8, 2015 [36 favorites]
We don't even understand why the meat computer runs one personality yet, do we? Running multiple in parallel, running several in series over the course of the lifetime of the meat, or whatever combination it is could be happening.
posted by Slackermagee at 4:09 AM on June 8, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by Slackermagee at 4:09 AM on June 8, 2015 [2 favorites]
The Vice article cites a handful of outside sources, but one of them is a single-person case study, one is a NYTimes think-piece rather than an actual study, and one appears to be a rather data-lite "study" full of lines like this:
Any broader application of the account of the man who married one of the multiples and treated the rest as a family, for example, might do very strange things to the usual notions of consent and bodily autonomy. Would one multiple have the right to insist that their sexual disinterest in someone trump another multiple's sexual interest when it comes to the use of the body? If the majority of the system wishes to have children, does that mean any dissenting multiples simply have to go along? What of a multiple who wishes to transition or undergo body modification when other multiples do not experience the body in the same way?
I'm not sure how you reconcile a plurality of minds with the assumption that "the system" as a whole should be treated as one person in matters of consent and responsibility, unless we take it that the multiples are only distinct personae in a very superficial sense.
posted by kewb at 4:17 AM on June 8, 2015 [25 favorites]
There is also a second point of connection between the soul and the physical body called the consciousness thread....and this:
According to esotericism, human beings are comprised of five components or ‘bodies’ - the physical body, the etheric body, the emotional body, the mental body and the soul. The physical body is, of course, dense and tangible. The other bodies are intangible and formed of subtler matter or material, which is not visible to the eye. The etheric body is of particular interest in the study of DID and it is important that definite attempts to eventually substantiate its existence be made....investigation of the etheric body will serve to synthesize traditional Eastern wisdom, which has long recognized the underlying energy system of the centres or chakras and the Western mechanistic view into one coherent whole, eventually revolutionizing both medicine and psychology.The result is that the article seems to provide extremely poor support. It relies on an ethics of trust and the notion that understanding someone else's subjectivity is simply a matter of trusting their immediate self-report. Except, of course, when it isn't, as here:
Interestingly enough, many multiples disagree with Milligan's insanity defense. They take full responsibility for the body, no matter how disconnected to it they otherwise feel.But we find this response alongside statements like this:
This is our reality, they argue. Why are you imposing your reality onto us?....."There should not be one model of reality imposed upon everyone. Society can and should change to accept those who are different, rather than enforcing a single standard of normality and punishing those who don't fit."The multiplicity activism community is still creating an imposed consensus reality, because there's a pressing need to deny Milligan's account of his own subjectivity. More broadly, the norm they're producing seems to be that all parts of the system, even those which are detached or dissenting, are responsible for and effectively consent to the actions of other parts of that system.
Any broader application of the account of the man who married one of the multiples and treated the rest as a family, for example, might do very strange things to the usual notions of consent and bodily autonomy. Would one multiple have the right to insist that their sexual disinterest in someone trump another multiple's sexual interest when it comes to the use of the body? If the majority of the system wishes to have children, does that mean any dissenting multiples simply have to go along? What of a multiple who wishes to transition or undergo body modification when other multiples do not experience the body in the same way?
I'm not sure how you reconcile a plurality of minds with the assumption that "the system" as a whole should be treated as one person in matters of consent and responsibility, unless we take it that the multiples are only distinct personae in a very superficial sense.
posted by kewb at 4:17 AM on June 8, 2015 [25 favorites]
But when a disorder of the inner ear forced Miakoda and her system to leave that job, her employer denied them unemployment benefits. "After working there for five years, he insisted that a multiple couldn't possibly hold a job," she says.
Ugh. I know I shouldn't be surprised by this, but I still am.
Yeah, this is unfair bullshit, whatever else you think of the article's conclusions.
posted by kewb at 4:25 AM on June 8, 2015 [1 favorite]
Ugh. I know I shouldn't be surprised by this, but I still am.
Yeah, this is unfair bullshit, whatever else you think of the article's conclusions.
posted by kewb at 4:25 AM on June 8, 2015 [1 favorite]
The best way to understand a system is to watch it fail. Under extreme stress, the human mind reverts to earlier, younger states. Which is interesting, because it implies there's something to revert to.
Except that the system we're referring to has the particular quality of allowing for a reverting to an earlier, OLDER state, defying our understanding of how the arrow of time actually works within the expression of Self.
"I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now .. . "
It seems this is actually a rather common experience for most of us. Something we have experienced during the course of living, where we suddenly embrace an understanding in an accelerated way like it is being remembered more than learned anew.
I am legion, and we are one? Can't we all just get along?
posted by RoseyD at 4:43 AM on June 8, 2015 [2 favorites]
Except that the system we're referring to has the particular quality of allowing for a reverting to an earlier, OLDER state, defying our understanding of how the arrow of time actually works within the expression of Self.
"I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now .. . "
It seems this is actually a rather common experience for most of us. Something we have experienced during the course of living, where we suddenly embrace an understanding in an accelerated way like it is being remembered more than learned anew.
I am legion, and we are one? Can't we all just get along?
posted by RoseyD at 4:43 AM on June 8, 2015 [2 favorites]
Somehow we're completely unsurprised when a brain exhibits multiple personalities over the dimension of time, and consider that normal.
I don't doubt that human experience can encompass a multiplicity within a single body in one or another sense; I disagree with some of the conclusions about what that means that are reached (or rather, reached for) in the linked article.
posted by kewb at 4:58 AM on June 8, 2015
I don't doubt that human experience can encompass a multiplicity within a single body in one or another sense; I disagree with some of the conclusions about what that means that are reached (or rather, reached for) in the linked article.
posted by kewb at 4:58 AM on June 8, 2015
I have talked about this before on the Blue, but I am at least open to the idea of DID as a real thing, because I experienced it during a seizure -- I have a very clear memory of a calm and lucid part of my mind (Me 1) which was analyzing the situation ("OK, I am in a hospital. I can only move my eyes. I think I have a breathing tube in, huh.") and a non-lucid part of my mind (Me 2) which was in the process of ripping out that breathing tube. Me 1 was aware of Me 1 and Me 2, while Me 2 was only aware of Me 2, and I was very clear on being both "mes" at the same time, even though that meant that I had very different perceptions, understandings, and information at the same time. It's possible this was all a vivid hallucination, of course, but I do have some external corroboration.
I understand this as a disordered mental state cause by my brain's brain's inability to properly form a "self" out of my perceptions and memory because of the massive disruptions caused by the seizure, but it doesn't seem impossible that other people experience this as an ongoing condition and understand it differently, since I assume that they need to come to some sort of accommodation with the situation to function at all.
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:10 AM on June 8, 2015 [14 favorites]
I understand this as a disordered mental state cause by my brain's brain's inability to properly form a "self" out of my perceptions and memory because of the massive disruptions caused by the seizure, but it doesn't seem impossible that other people experience this as an ongoing condition and understand it differently, since I assume that they need to come to some sort of accommodation with the situation to function at all.
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:10 AM on June 8, 2015 [14 favorites]
I'm skeptical. A lot of people self-diagnose with DID, but it's quite a rare disorder and offentimes other diagnoses (bipolar, schizophrenia, schizo-affective, PTSD) make a lot more sense. I do believe DID is a thing, but it is a reaction to extreme childhood trauma much of the time and again is rare. What I'm saying is...I'm not certain these individuals have what they think they have, and that it's not disordered. It's a way for the brain to maintain emotional functioning in the face of trauma. I don't believe people actually have multiple personalities, just that in DID things are siphoned into different packages instead of all aspects being together.
posted by Aranquis at 5:23 AM on June 8, 2015 [6 favorites]
posted by Aranquis at 5:23 AM on June 8, 2015 [6 favorites]
That's a great piece, thanks for sharing.
posted by warriorqueen at 5:24 AM on June 8, 2015
posted by warriorqueen at 5:24 AM on June 8, 2015
We don't even understand why the meat computer runs one personality yet, do we?
Nope. Not even close.
posted by thelonius at 5:33 AM on June 8, 2015 [2 favorites]
Nope. Not even close.
posted by thelonius at 5:33 AM on June 8, 2015 [2 favorites]
Studies about dissociative identity disorder have shown the following: First, a body diagnosed with DID can react differently to medicine depending on which person is fronting. Second, one body examined by doctors could see when certain people were fronting, but was blind when others fronted. And third, there are distinct differences between the brain patterns of those with DID and the brain patterns of actors who are simply taking on different personas.
Given the rarity of the disorder, how do you assemble a statistically significant set of N subjects? These read like anecdotal data.
posted by bukvich at 5:39 AM on June 8, 2015 [8 favorites]
Given the rarity of the disorder, how do you assemble a statistically significant set of N subjects? These read like anecdotal data.
posted by bukvich at 5:39 AM on June 8, 2015 [8 favorites]
Yeah. I already struggle to help family members because their way of being, and getting real support for it, is hindered by a community of people with the same label that's been dominated by appropriators with factitious accounts of what it is. I'm not eager to help anyone else fall down that hole.
All the alarms are ringing. Accounts of lived experience at odds with evidence-based studies. The drift from advocacy to developing an ironclad resistance to skepticism. Internet self-identification. Blaming any pathological component on a separate issue.
posted by mobunited at 5:47 AM on June 8, 2015 [26 favorites]
All the alarms are ringing. Accounts of lived experience at odds with evidence-based studies. The drift from advocacy to developing an ironclad resistance to skepticism. Internet self-identification. Blaming any pathological component on a separate issue.
posted by mobunited at 5:47 AM on June 8, 2015 [26 favorites]
The difference between someone who experiences multiple personalities that do not share common memories and consciousness and another person who experiences multiple personalities that all have access to the experiences the common body goes through seems so distinctive that I don't understand the value of saying they are various instances of the same thing.
The former would indeed be an experience of reality different from mine; the latter just seems to be a different way of expressing a range of moods and emotions. What's the difference between one person who feels radically different at various times and a person who describes those radical differences as separate selves?
It's not uncommon for novelists to describe their characters as having autonomy, which doesn't seem far from what some of the individuals profiled here are expressing.
Also, given the shorthand characterization of the case of Shirley Mason, I think reference to Debbie Nathan's Sybil Expossed provides a valuable alternative view.
Finally, regarding Miakoda's account of being denied unemployment benefits because their employer "insisted that a multiple couldn't possibly hold a job," I agree that it's bullshit. But for me, bullshit in the sense that I don't believe it happened as Miakoda claimed that it did.
posted by layceepee at 6:27 AM on June 8, 2015 [3 favorites]
The former would indeed be an experience of reality different from mine; the latter just seems to be a different way of expressing a range of moods and emotions. What's the difference between one person who feels radically different at various times and a person who describes those radical differences as separate selves?
It's not uncommon for novelists to describe their characters as having autonomy, which doesn't seem far from what some of the individuals profiled here are expressing.
Also, given the shorthand characterization of the case of Shirley Mason, I think reference to Debbie Nathan's Sybil Expossed provides a valuable alternative view.
Finally, regarding Miakoda's account of being denied unemployment benefits because their employer "insisted that a multiple couldn't possibly hold a job," I agree that it's bullshit. But for me, bullshit in the sense that I don't believe it happened as Miakoda claimed that it did.
posted by layceepee at 6:27 AM on June 8, 2015 [3 favorites]
I got a lot out of Ian Hacking's book on this: Rewriting the Soul: Multiple Personalities and the Science of Memory.
He presents three possibilities and remains fairly agnostic as to which one is true:
1. Multiples are real, and somewhat common (most who identify themselves as multiples are actually experiencing multiple personalities). Multiples are likely a response to childhood trauma, especially sexual assault.
2. Most multiples are a projection that results from some other disorder like borderline personality disorder. They channel their distress into this specific presentation after being "coached" by the multiples community and the captured therapists who promote this view. (This is why the average DID/MPD patient is a middle-aged woman with a substance abuse problem that helps account for "lost time".)
3. Some mixture of 1 and 2: perhaps there are few real multiples and then a larger group of people who present as multiples after coaching.
I find that only #2 or #3 fit the most important facts, because diagnosis with MPD seems to spread socially.
Also, it's helpful to remember than multiples activists don't all embrace the "Dissociative Identity Disorder" framework. It's also helpful to remember that in its earlier iteration, multiples therapists were at the heart of the various satanic child abuse scares. This is good reason for skepticism of the movements' other claims, it seems to me.
posted by anotherpanacea at 6:51 AM on June 8, 2015 [11 favorites]
He presents three possibilities and remains fairly agnostic as to which one is true:
1. Multiples are real, and somewhat common (most who identify themselves as multiples are actually experiencing multiple personalities). Multiples are likely a response to childhood trauma, especially sexual assault.
2. Most multiples are a projection that results from some other disorder like borderline personality disorder. They channel their distress into this specific presentation after being "coached" by the multiples community and the captured therapists who promote this view. (This is why the average DID/MPD patient is a middle-aged woman with a substance abuse problem that helps account for "lost time".)
3. Some mixture of 1 and 2: perhaps there are few real multiples and then a larger group of people who present as multiples after coaching.
I find that only #2 or #3 fit the most important facts, because diagnosis with MPD seems to spread socially.
Also, it's helpful to remember than multiples activists don't all embrace the "Dissociative Identity Disorder" framework. It's also helpful to remember that in its earlier iteration, multiples therapists were at the heart of the various satanic child abuse scares. This is good reason for skepticism of the movements' other claims, it seems to me.
posted by anotherpanacea at 6:51 AM on June 8, 2015 [11 favorites]
I'm skeptical. A lot of people self-diagnose with DID, but it's quite a rare disorder and offentimes other diagnoses (bipolar, schizophrenia, schizo-affective, PTSD) make a lot more sense.
It's also a really, really popular thing for attention-seeking teenagers to pretend to have in order to feel special. Search for "fictive" and "headmates" if you want to see mental illness being appropriated.
posted by Pope Guilty at 6:54 AM on June 8, 2015 [9 favorites]
It's also a really, really popular thing for attention-seeking teenagers to pretend to have in order to feel special. Search for "fictive" and "headmates" if you want to see mental illness being appropriated.
posted by Pope Guilty at 6:54 AM on June 8, 2015 [9 favorites]
Mod note: This is a comment from an anonymous mefite.
I am someone who has DID (dx by multiple psychiatrists at this point) who would like to stay that way. However for me right now it is a disorder and some of the things in the article are so far removed from my experience I feel like that the Vice article went out of its way to find the most radical group of multiples he could find.posted by cortex (staff) at 7:07 AM on June 8, 2015 [20 favorites]
I come from the traditional DID makeup, very very traumatic early childhood abuse repressed until I was an adult. Thought I was doing well and everything fell apart.
For me concensus between parts is nessisary for major changes, or our lives will distablize really quickly. I have very young parts and have safe spaces in my head for events such as sex (I'm married and do like that occasionally) but it is a complete mood killer when my young parts interrupt me time because everything has to stop. My young parts cannot concent, the event becomes traumatic and suddenly in trying to figure out why I'm (as a part) having intense fear feelings around my wife. Sigh.
However I do want more advocacy it is desperately needed. I'm in constant fear of losing my job of someone finds out at work even though I've held my job for 5 years. Disclosing is a terrible thing and so anxiety provoking.
My day to day life is pretty normal and I'm not into the idea of becoming singlet as they say. I do want to continue to work on my trauma and get some of my more problematic symptoms decreased.
I think aninfinitemind.com is a much better representation of advocacy that people with DID need.
It's also a really, really popular thing for attention-seeking teenagers to pretend to have in order to feel special.
I'm firmly nestled in the psychology armchair here, but this is what most of the cases I've read about looked like to me. And:
"Well, in theory," James admitted, and changed into Sascha who said, "Bullshit in theory. There's documented cases as recently as fifty years ago. [...]
My major question that I haven't seen addressed is highlighted here. Why do most of the alternate personalities seem to manifest as stereotypes? The foul-mouthed rebel here, often the naive child, the hot-tempered one, etc.
Plus, don't we know that "personality" is a construct? Our selves change from moment to moment, and personality is just a way to describe how any particular unit tends to be in the same way that luck is not a property, but a way of talking about tendencies. In that context, what would it even mean to have multiple personalities beyond being extremely erratic?
Note that these are all questions, and this is something I feel I fundamentally can't know about.
posted by cmoj at 7:08 AM on June 8, 2015 [2 favorites]
I'm firmly nestled in the psychology armchair here, but this is what most of the cases I've read about looked like to me. And:
"Well, in theory," James admitted, and changed into Sascha who said, "Bullshit in theory. There's documented cases as recently as fifty years ago. [...]
My major question that I haven't seen addressed is highlighted here. Why do most of the alternate personalities seem to manifest as stereotypes? The foul-mouthed rebel here, often the naive child, the hot-tempered one, etc.
Plus, don't we know that "personality" is a construct? Our selves change from moment to moment, and personality is just a way to describe how any particular unit tends to be in the same way that luck is not a property, but a way of talking about tendencies. In that context, what would it even mean to have multiple personalities beyond being extremely erratic?
Note that these are all questions, and this is something I feel I fundamentally can't know about.
posted by cmoj at 7:08 AM on June 8, 2015 [2 favorites]
We don't even understand why the meat computer runs one personality yet, do we?
Nope. Not even close
Possible derail here, but is that a goal?
I mean, I think the computer metaphor is troubling and disastrous. I know it's all electrical impulses up there, but I honestly think we are reaching the boundaries of the scientific method to continue to view the human brain as a big CPU. Especially since one of the cornerstones of scientific inquiry is the ability to replicate the experiment. Forgive me for sounding alarmist here, but do we need to know why people "run" one personality, or many? Can't we just . . . do it?
posted by chainsofreedom at 7:27 AM on June 8, 2015
Nope. Not even close
Possible derail here, but is that a goal?
I mean, I think the computer metaphor is troubling and disastrous. I know it's all electrical impulses up there, but I honestly think we are reaching the boundaries of the scientific method to continue to view the human brain as a big CPU. Especially since one of the cornerstones of scientific inquiry is the ability to replicate the experiment. Forgive me for sounding alarmist here, but do we need to know why people "run" one personality, or many? Can't we just . . . do it?
posted by chainsofreedom at 7:27 AM on June 8, 2015
My wife has been diagnosed with this and it explains her memory lapses. It's frustrating thing to live, as pretty much any mental illness. On the plus side, she says that getting to watch a movie 3 or 4 times and have it be pretty new each time is a great side benefit. She also says it's kinda neat, when everyone is behaving, to have actual other personalities, it means you're never alone. My introverted self would probably go nuts about this, heh.
Like any disease, there's probably a spectrum to it, with some experience light effects, while others are more heavily bothered.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:29 AM on June 8, 2015 [2 favorites]
Like any disease, there's probably a spectrum to it, with some experience light effects, while others are more heavily bothered.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:29 AM on June 8, 2015 [2 favorites]
Man I will wade into it I guess.
On self-identified co-conscious multiples who are (?) ruining it for real multiples: yeah, it's annoying, but it's also annoying when someone who was sad for a week once claims they get depression, or who was upset at a funeral says it gave them PTSD. Other than in a few online spaces, claiming multiplicity gets you no goodies and really, this tendency for some people to claim false positive is just part of the human condition and doesn't reflect on the reality of others. Just because some teenagers think their imaginations make them multiple doesn't mean multiples don't exist. Which ones are represented in this particular article is up for debate I guess. And on the Internet. (News at 11: Rowdy teenagers are probably more visible on Tumblr and other online communities than multiples quietly picking their kids up at daycare.)
That said, just because someone is not visibly melting down in confusion every day doesn't make them not multiple. With the immediate reaction being that multiplicity is extremely rare or requires one's life to be in shreds, there's a kind of confirmation bias that's pretty widespread. If you're not Sybil-like, you're not multiple, so you wander out of the system again if you can. If you don't you usually end up with 10 years of bad therapy.
What if it does exist but mostly doesn't look like Sybil? There are some great books out there including First Person Plural and A Fractured Mind (the latter written by a high-profile scholar who's multiple) which are not centered on a therapist's view. (Herschel Walker also has a memoir out I think?) Of course they are also written by men, which gives them legitimacy (*cough*).
My interpretation of why multiples are supposed to be so crazy is that the initial wave of books were written by crazy therapists who exploited vulnerable people, plus the wave of satanic abuse scandals. But what if garden-variety multiples just aren't that interesting and the abuse that happened to them, while horrific, wasn't a worldwide conspiracy? They might be living among you...err, us.
Would one multiple have the right to insist that their sexual disinterest in someone trump another multiple's sexual interest when it comes to the use of the body?
You negotiate use of the body and timing for sexy fun times. This takes practice, hang in there anon. poster...I have heard.
If the majority of the system wishes to have children, does that mean any dissenting multiples simply have to go along?
It depends but I think most responsible multiples would only have children if they could agree to all be the parent. Of course with so many people not understanding what it really looks like and deciding it doesn't exist, that can make it hard for people to get the right therapy or help before someone has kids.
What if a multiple who wishes to transition or undergo body modification when other multiples do not experience the body in the same way?
That would be negotiated by the group, but it's my opinion that multiples have a lighter relationship to their bodies anyway because by definition almost everyone in a multiple system is likely to have some degree of body dysmorphia. This actually is probably one of the reasons the trans and multiple communities sometimes have trouble working together; on the surface their problems seem very similar, the person inside is not the body outside. But for multiples there is really no long-term solution so the compromises they have to achieve end up being really different.
posted by warriorqueen at 7:41 AM on June 8, 2015 [3 favorites]
On self-identified co-conscious multiples who are (?) ruining it for real multiples: yeah, it's annoying, but it's also annoying when someone who was sad for a week once claims they get depression, or who was upset at a funeral says it gave them PTSD. Other than in a few online spaces, claiming multiplicity gets you no goodies and really, this tendency for some people to claim false positive is just part of the human condition and doesn't reflect on the reality of others. Just because some teenagers think their imaginations make them multiple doesn't mean multiples don't exist. Which ones are represented in this particular article is up for debate I guess. And on the Internet. (News at 11: Rowdy teenagers are probably more visible on Tumblr and other online communities than multiples quietly picking their kids up at daycare.)
That said, just because someone is not visibly melting down in confusion every day doesn't make them not multiple. With the immediate reaction being that multiplicity is extremely rare or requires one's life to be in shreds, there's a kind of confirmation bias that's pretty widespread. If you're not Sybil-like, you're not multiple, so you wander out of the system again if you can. If you don't you usually end up with 10 years of bad therapy.
What if it does exist but mostly doesn't look like Sybil? There are some great books out there including First Person Plural and A Fractured Mind (the latter written by a high-profile scholar who's multiple) which are not centered on a therapist's view. (Herschel Walker also has a memoir out I think?) Of course they are also written by men, which gives them legitimacy (*cough*).
My interpretation of why multiples are supposed to be so crazy is that the initial wave of books were written by crazy therapists who exploited vulnerable people, plus the wave of satanic abuse scandals. But what if garden-variety multiples just aren't that interesting and the abuse that happened to them, while horrific, wasn't a worldwide conspiracy? They might be living among you...err, us.
Would one multiple have the right to insist that their sexual disinterest in someone trump another multiple's sexual interest when it comes to the use of the body?
You negotiate use of the body and timing for sexy fun times. This takes practice, hang in there anon. poster...I have heard.
If the majority of the system wishes to have children, does that mean any dissenting multiples simply have to go along?
It depends but I think most responsible multiples would only have children if they could agree to all be the parent. Of course with so many people not understanding what it really looks like and deciding it doesn't exist, that can make it hard for people to get the right therapy or help before someone has kids.
What if a multiple who wishes to transition or undergo body modification when other multiples do not experience the body in the same way?
That would be negotiated by the group, but it's my opinion that multiples have a lighter relationship to their bodies anyway because by definition almost everyone in a multiple system is likely to have some degree of body dysmorphia. This actually is probably one of the reasons the trans and multiple communities sometimes have trouble working together; on the surface their problems seem very similar, the person inside is not the body outside. But for multiples there is really no long-term solution so the compromises they have to achieve end up being really different.
posted by warriorqueen at 7:41 AM on June 8, 2015 [3 favorites]
Sorry, feeling fiesty, will take these on and then go to a meeting.
Why do most of the alternate personalities seem to manifest as stereotypes? The foul-mouthed rebel here, often the naive child, the hot-tempered one, etc.
So this is a very complicated question but I think people in a multiple system are functioning at basically a level of massive social defect...if you see how little kids play house and there's the good mom and the bad baby and all that (firemen. Star Wars.), it's because the kids are learning to interact socially and they start by constructing a shared scenario where the roles are understood and then they negotiate from there.
Because someone in a multiple system only gets so many hours a week/month/year to interact with people as themselves compared to a normal human being, I think the shorthand for most people when they are still overcoming their inherent social-hours deficit is to present as a known stereotype and feel through how people react. This isn't necessarily a decision; it's as natural as kids' play.
In that context, what would it even mean to have multiple personalities beyond being extremely erratic?
So here's my shorthand:
Regular person: Has a wardrobe.
Person who makes up characters for fiction: Knows what their characters would wear, sometimes dresses up like them for fun, might 'hear' them commenting on a fashion choice.
Multiple: Misses out on three months of time, discovers "someone" has thrown out all their favourite clothes.
posted by warriorqueen at 7:56 AM on June 8, 2015 [8 favorites]
Why do most of the alternate personalities seem to manifest as stereotypes? The foul-mouthed rebel here, often the naive child, the hot-tempered one, etc.
So this is a very complicated question but I think people in a multiple system are functioning at basically a level of massive social defect...if you see how little kids play house and there's the good mom and the bad baby and all that (firemen. Star Wars.), it's because the kids are learning to interact socially and they start by constructing a shared scenario where the roles are understood and then they negotiate from there.
Because someone in a multiple system only gets so many hours a week/month/year to interact with people as themselves compared to a normal human being, I think the shorthand for most people when they are still overcoming their inherent social-hours deficit is to present as a known stereotype and feel through how people react. This isn't necessarily a decision; it's as natural as kids' play.
In that context, what would it even mean to have multiple personalities beyond being extremely erratic?
So here's my shorthand:
Regular person: Has a wardrobe.
Person who makes up characters for fiction: Knows what their characters would wear, sometimes dresses up like them for fun, might 'hear' them commenting on a fashion choice.
Multiple: Misses out on three months of time, discovers "someone" has thrown out all their favourite clothes.
posted by warriorqueen at 7:56 AM on June 8, 2015 [8 favorites]
It seems like an issue with all this is that DID is such a radical difference of subjectivity from how the majority of people experience the world that it's difficult for non-DID people to get their heads around it, difficult to describe and hence difficult to distinguish between people with DID and people who find it comforting to think of themselves as having DID without really having it. It seems as though it's a bit like meeting a person who can see extra colors - if you can't see the colors, it's different enough that even trying to hear the explanation requires a conceptual leap, and it's much easier, intellectually, just to assume that they're making it up or it's not "real" or it's attention-seeking or whatever.
The older I get, the more Eve Kosofsky Sedgewick's first axiom - "people are different from one another" - seems like one of life's most complex and hardest lessons.
posted by Frowner at 8:00 AM on June 8, 2015 [9 favorites]
The older I get, the more Eve Kosofsky Sedgewick's first axiom - "people are different from one another" - seems like one of life's most complex and hardest lessons.
posted by Frowner at 8:00 AM on June 8, 2015 [9 favorites]
I mean, I think the computer metaphor is troubling and disastrous. I know it's all electrical impulses up there, but I honestly think we are reaching the boundaries of the scientific method to continue to view the human brain as a big CPU. Especially since one of the cornerstones of scientific inquiry is the ability to replicate the experiment. Forgive me for sounding alarmist here, but do we need to know why people "run" one personality, or many? Can't we just . . . do it?
I agree that it's extremely weak; I see no particular reason at all to assume that the brain works anything like a digital computer. I'm just concurring that I don't think there's that much detailed understanding of how neurology produces conscious selves, at the present stage of knowledge. The fact that a lot of people want to use that for an "argument from ignorance" is annoying, but we should be honest about what we do and do not know, I think.
posted by thelonius at 8:16 AM on June 8, 2015
I agree that it's extremely weak; I see no particular reason at all to assume that the brain works anything like a digital computer. I'm just concurring that I don't think there's that much detailed understanding of how neurology produces conscious selves, at the present stage of knowledge. The fact that a lot of people want to use that for an "argument from ignorance" is annoying, but we should be honest about what we do and do not know, I think.
posted by thelonius at 8:16 AM on June 8, 2015
“Faust complained about having two souls in his breast, but I harbor a whole crowd of them and they quarrel. It is like being in a republic.”
-Otto Von Bismarck
posted by no mind at 9:31 AM on June 8, 2015
-Otto Von Bismarck
posted by no mind at 9:31 AM on June 8, 2015
Remember the studies on split brain patients? Where the hemispheres have been severed. These people have reported feeling like there are two people in one body - some times the right hand is literally fighting with the left hand. Is DID a similar phenomena? It's true we have no idea how the mind coheres a self out of the noise, but it manages to, despite ourselves (ha ha).
I wonder if some of this confusion comes from the early evolution of prehistoric man, especially as s/he slowly started to develop language. Previously life was more sensory and feeling-based. We felt our way through the world in a way much more animal. Language did not organize thoughts, experience did. Language is both an external (talking to others) and internal (thinking in words) phenomena. So the person is slowly moving from external sensory wordless thought into worded thought. I imagine it would be confusing to suddenly have words pop into one's head, where previously existed just feelings, intentions and intuitions. Would the person identify with the inside-the-head voice? Or think it was someone else? Maybe think it was a god "speaking" to them? Somehow we learned to make it feel like "us," to absorb that voice into our experience, but maybe not everyone feels that way - hence hearing voices when you're falling asleep, or schizophrenia, or DID.
I also wonder how this relates to transcendence. Ostensibly if the self does not exist, then one could "try on" different selves as it suited them, since the mind's representation of itself is an illusion. It's just that right now it feels like we can't change the illusion, like the self we are is the self we must be. When really we could flip to a different self: "I can’t get out. My horns won’t fit through the door." I've often wondered if transcendence is a proper state itself, or just another form of disassociation.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 10:02 AM on June 8, 2015 [2 favorites]
I wonder if some of this confusion comes from the early evolution of prehistoric man, especially as s/he slowly started to develop language. Previously life was more sensory and feeling-based. We felt our way through the world in a way much more animal. Language did not organize thoughts, experience did. Language is both an external (talking to others) and internal (thinking in words) phenomena. So the person is slowly moving from external sensory wordless thought into worded thought. I imagine it would be confusing to suddenly have words pop into one's head, where previously existed just feelings, intentions and intuitions. Would the person identify with the inside-the-head voice? Or think it was someone else? Maybe think it was a god "speaking" to them? Somehow we learned to make it feel like "us," to absorb that voice into our experience, but maybe not everyone feels that way - hence hearing voices when you're falling asleep, or schizophrenia, or DID.
I also wonder how this relates to transcendence. Ostensibly if the self does not exist, then one could "try on" different selves as it suited them, since the mind's representation of itself is an illusion. It's just that right now it feels like we can't change the illusion, like the self we are is the self we must be. When really we could flip to a different self: "I can’t get out. My horns won’t fit through the door." I've often wondered if transcendence is a proper state itself, or just another form of disassociation.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 10:02 AM on June 8, 2015 [2 favorites]
I think it's really hard to speculate on these issues, St. Peepsburg, because DID seems to be a very rare condition, hard to isolate from confounding factors, and based largely on subjective reporting which leaves it badly vulnerable to the credulous, fame-seeking, and delusional (both on the part of people asserting the experience and the people diagnosing it).
As I said above, I have experienced something like what people describe as DID, and it made me really thing hard about the idea of self and identity. I believe that the self is a process and not a thing, and therefore is much more contingent on the given moment than the usual Western idea of the Self as an immutable core that is the foundation of a person. Given this, I don't think it's impossible that a person could produce two or more separate "selfs" in a given moment as a persistent state, and it's an attractive idea that "imaginary friends" are related to this in some way and that Julian Jaynes was in some ways right that, at least some people, some of the time, are speaking to "gods inside" while most people integrate those "selves" into an apparent "whole."
However, based on my brief experience, I can only imagine that a person genuinely living with DID is going to have such a different experience of the world that, even if it were possible to find a large enough pool of people to do a really thorough study, it wouldn't answer many of these questions -- I mean, I experienced a similar condition as an aberration of though -- what does that say to someone who experiences DID as a regular state of being? I mean, I find it very difficult to talk meaningfully about my visual abnormalities even to doctors who should have some sense of what the experience is like; something that is so fundamental as the construction of identity is going to be significantly more occluded.
Which is a really long way of saying "I don't know, and I don't even have a thought about how we would go about knowing better."
posted by GenjiandProust at 10:32 AM on June 8, 2015 [5 favorites]
As I said above, I have experienced something like what people describe as DID, and it made me really thing hard about the idea of self and identity. I believe that the self is a process and not a thing, and therefore is much more contingent on the given moment than the usual Western idea of the Self as an immutable core that is the foundation of a person. Given this, I don't think it's impossible that a person could produce two or more separate "selfs" in a given moment as a persistent state, and it's an attractive idea that "imaginary friends" are related to this in some way and that Julian Jaynes was in some ways right that, at least some people, some of the time, are speaking to "gods inside" while most people integrate those "selves" into an apparent "whole."
However, based on my brief experience, I can only imagine that a person genuinely living with DID is going to have such a different experience of the world that, even if it were possible to find a large enough pool of people to do a really thorough study, it wouldn't answer many of these questions -- I mean, I experienced a similar condition as an aberration of though -- what does that say to someone who experiences DID as a regular state of being? I mean, I find it very difficult to talk meaningfully about my visual abnormalities even to doctors who should have some sense of what the experience is like; something that is so fundamental as the construction of identity is going to be significantly more occluded.
Which is a really long way of saying "I don't know, and I don't even have a thought about how we would go about knowing better."
posted by GenjiandProust at 10:32 AM on June 8, 2015 [5 favorites]
Why do personalities manifest aa sterotypes?
If you look at DID in the clinical context the general belief is that alternate parts start happening in young childhood regardless of when the fronting or primary part realizes it. If you think of an abused 4 year old splitting into different compartmentalized parts you have to think of the brain with the capacity of someone that age. That is going to have some definite sterotypes. A part created to take care of the inside parts will be modeled after a fictional mom literally from storybooks ( assuming that the mother is in on whatever abuse is occurring).
Once someone has the capacity to make parts they cyan make parts at any age in the right situations( though those situations may be terrible). So some parts may be more developed than others. Some parts can spend time on the outside and develop a 'stronger' personality. (This is why sone models of therapy will only let the primary person speak, but this is controversial) An adult who does not have the capacity to make parts will most likely never be able to make them regardless what happens. The personality is too set.
posted by AlexiaSky at 10:46 AM on June 8, 2015
If you look at DID in the clinical context the general belief is that alternate parts start happening in young childhood regardless of when the fronting or primary part realizes it. If you think of an abused 4 year old splitting into different compartmentalized parts you have to think of the brain with the capacity of someone that age. That is going to have some definite sterotypes. A part created to take care of the inside parts will be modeled after a fictional mom literally from storybooks ( assuming that the mother is in on whatever abuse is occurring).
Once someone has the capacity to make parts they cyan make parts at any age in the right situations( though those situations may be terrible). So some parts may be more developed than others. Some parts can spend time on the outside and develop a 'stronger' personality. (This is why sone models of therapy will only let the primary person speak, but this is controversial) An adult who does not have the capacity to make parts will most likely never be able to make them regardless what happens. The personality is too set.
posted by AlexiaSky at 10:46 AM on June 8, 2015
Welp not to be an ass, but the thing I always wonder when I hear about systems like one with the Youtube video is how one of their facets can be a fictional character from a fictional world. I can accept the idea of the facets being born to handle certain situations. I can't really accept the facets being born to personify popular anime RPGs. Anyone?
posted by Samizdata at 11:15 AM on June 8, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by Samizdata at 11:15 AM on June 8, 2015 [2 favorites]
When I was a young teenager, I was legitimately afraid that I had two other personalities. It wasn't true, of course; what I had was a strong sexual awakening combined with a great deal of scribbling creativity. If I had been allowed to use Tumblr when I was thirteen or so, I believe it would have retarded my growth and introduced me to people who encouraged me not to grow out of my phase, which went away naturally. And God forbid I get the idea of having fictional headmates.
I know a lot of people experience the world in ways I don't imagine. I'm not the kind of person who thinks that my knowledge or imagination should be the limit of what's possible. But the internet has the power to do great harm in matters of mental health. I would hate for DID, which has real sufferers, to be considered a Morgellons for the Hot Topic set.
posted by Countess Elena at 11:42 AM on June 8, 2015 [5 favorites]
I know a lot of people experience the world in ways I don't imagine. I'm not the kind of person who thinks that my knowledge or imagination should be the limit of what's possible. But the internet has the power to do great harm in matters of mental health. I would hate for DID, which has real sufferers, to be considered a Morgellons for the Hot Topic set.
posted by Countess Elena at 11:42 AM on June 8, 2015 [5 favorites]
Welp not to be an ass, but the thing I always wonder when I hear about systems like one with the Youtube video is how one of their facets can be a fictional character from a fictional world. I can accept the idea of the facets being born to handle certain situations. I can't really accept the facets being born to personify popular anime RPGs. Anyone?
Young kids often want to be someone else. As means of escaping horrible abuse, it seems entirely plausible.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 11:49 AM on June 8, 2015
Young kids often want to be someone else. As means of escaping horrible abuse, it seems entirely plausible.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 11:49 AM on June 8, 2015
Countess Elena: "When I was a young teenager, I was legitimately afraid that I had two other personalities. It wasn't true, of course; what I had was a strong sexual awakening combined with a great deal of scribbling creativity. If I had been allowed to use Tumblr when I was thirteen or so, I believe it would have retarded my growth and introduced me to people who encouraged me not to grow out of my phase, which went away naturally. And God forbid I get the idea of having fictional headmates.
I know a lot of people experience the world in ways I don't imagine. I'm not the kind of person who thinks that my knowledge or imagination should be the limit of what's possible. But the internet has the power to do great harm in matters of mental health. I would hate for DID, which has real sufferers, to be considered a Morgellons for the Hot Topic set."
Agreed. Plus with the often unquestioning acceptance of the self-diagnosed online, it can lead to the truly diagnosed being in a really bad spot. Not even to mention that my experiences with the internet and self-diagnoses often makes it really difficult to discuss things with my counsellor as I don't want to be one of "those WebMD types" as I refer to them.
posted by Samizdata at 11:52 AM on June 8, 2015 [1 favorite]
I know a lot of people experience the world in ways I don't imagine. I'm not the kind of person who thinks that my knowledge or imagination should be the limit of what's possible. But the internet has the power to do great harm in matters of mental health. I would hate for DID, which has real sufferers, to be considered a Morgellons for the Hot Topic set."
Agreed. Plus with the often unquestioning acceptance of the self-diagnosed online, it can lead to the truly diagnosed being in a really bad spot. Not even to mention that my experiences with the internet and self-diagnoses often makes it really difficult to discuss things with my counsellor as I don't want to be one of "those WebMD types" as I refer to them.
posted by Samizdata at 11:52 AM on June 8, 2015 [1 favorite]
Brandon Blatcher: "Welp not to be an ass, but the thing I always wonder when I hear about systems like one with the Youtube video is how one of their facets can be a fictional character from a fictional world. I can accept the idea of the facets being born to handle certain situations. I can't really accept the facets being born to personify popular anime RPGs. Anyone?
Young kids often want to be someone else. As means of escaping horrible abuse, it seems entirely plausible."
I guess I can give you that to some extent. Just seems questionable. (Just did my legwork. The first KH game came out in '02, so I suspect the numbers work out.) I tend to read it a little more as popularity seeking as anything though.
posted by Samizdata at 11:54 AM on June 8, 2015
Young kids often want to be someone else. As means of escaping horrible abuse, it seems entirely plausible."
I guess I can give you that to some extent. Just seems questionable. (Just did my legwork. The first KH game came out in '02, so I suspect the numbers work out.) I tend to read it a little more as popularity seeking as anything though.
posted by Samizdata at 11:54 AM on June 8, 2015
"I don't know, and I don't even have a thought about how we would go about knowing better."
There are multiples on record with their own memoirs, some of which I listed above, plus there are some interesting texts like Jekyll on Trial (Elen Saks) and Hidden Selves, which is (I think I am remembering this right) a group of thinkers commenting on one person's written experience of multiplicity. I mean it's no one's responsibility to go seek these things out, and it is hard when people are talking about fundamental gaps in perception. But I get so frustrated at the concept that If Only We Could Know when it's been 30+ years of people talking about it and I've been following it for like, 17. I really appreciate your comments GenjiandProust, it's just...if we can't believe people because they might be fame-seeking, and we can't study it 'cause it's rare, well then it's kind of a double-bind of self-expression.
I can't really accept the facets being born to personify popular anime RPGs. Anyone?
For me yeah this often shows where my own personal line of credulity lies but my best stab is that I think that if everyone around you tells you you don't exist for many formative years, and the vast majority of your subjective experience is spent in being abused, you may develop a weird self-concept.
But the internet has the power to do great harm in matters of mental health. I would hate for DID, which has real sufferers, to be considered a Morgellons for the Hot Topic set.
I appreciate the thought but I really do not fundamentally believe that people talking about their experiences or even their flawed beliefs about themselves is somehow Kryptonite to other people's mental health. Is talking about PTSD creating PTSD in others? Is discussing cancer provoking fear of cancer or people faking cancer? Is talking about being gay or trans somehow making people do stuff? Seriously, what makes DID so different?
posted by warriorqueen at 12:02 PM on June 8, 2015 [7 favorites]
There are multiples on record with their own memoirs, some of which I listed above, plus there are some interesting texts like Jekyll on Trial (Elen Saks) and Hidden Selves, which is (I think I am remembering this right) a group of thinkers commenting on one person's written experience of multiplicity. I mean it's no one's responsibility to go seek these things out, and it is hard when people are talking about fundamental gaps in perception. But I get so frustrated at the concept that If Only We Could Know when it's been 30+ years of people talking about it and I've been following it for like, 17. I really appreciate your comments GenjiandProust, it's just...if we can't believe people because they might be fame-seeking, and we can't study it 'cause it's rare, well then it's kind of a double-bind of self-expression.
I can't really accept the facets being born to personify popular anime RPGs. Anyone?
For me yeah this often shows where my own personal line of credulity lies but my best stab is that I think that if everyone around you tells you you don't exist for many formative years, and the vast majority of your subjective experience is spent in being abused, you may develop a weird self-concept.
But the internet has the power to do great harm in matters of mental health. I would hate for DID, which has real sufferers, to be considered a Morgellons for the Hot Topic set.
I appreciate the thought but I really do not fundamentally believe that people talking about their experiences or even their flawed beliefs about themselves is somehow Kryptonite to other people's mental health. Is talking about PTSD creating PTSD in others? Is discussing cancer provoking fear of cancer or people faking cancer? Is talking about being gay or trans somehow making people do stuff? Seriously, what makes DID so different?
posted by warriorqueen at 12:02 PM on June 8, 2015 [7 favorites]
Welp not to be an ass, but the thing I always wonder when I hear about systems like one with the Youtube video is how one of their facets can be a fictional character from a fictional world. I can accept the idea of the facets being born to handle certain situations. I can't really accept the facets being born to personify popular anime RPGs. Anyone?
Other people have already answered about this, but since I am part of a multiple system myself, I thought I would say what I think.
For background: we are a pretty traditional multiple system in terms of having had really significant trauma, having been diagnosed with DID, having done some good therapy (and some really bad therapy) and having eventually come to a place in our lives where we are all in communication and mostly on good terms with each other, and are much busier *living our lives* than we are worrying about being multiple. And as it happens, we do not have anyone in here (that I know about, some people are very very quiet about themselves) who identifies as being from a fictional world.
But... I think we easily could have, if things had gone differently, because a lot of people in here crystallised around very specific sets of experiences in ways that were trying to keep people with power happy, and some of that was happening at the same time as reading and imagining a lot of stuff. Some of the stuff we read and imagined was shared with adults, and those adults definitely (unknowingly) manipulated our multiplicity for their own purposes. So imagine a conversation like this:
Mom: You're in an awful mood today, what's wrong with you?
Person Fronting: ... (because they are in an awful mood because, say, an hour ago mom hit them)
Mom: Well, cut that out. I want to see that cheerful girl who is always smiling!
Us: *produces cheerful girl who is always smiling ASAP*
Mom: That's better! What are you reading?
Cheerful Girl: I'm reading a book about unicorns!
Mom: Oh, I've read that one! You should try to be more like character-in-book, she's *really a cheerful girl who is always smiling* and I would love to have a daughter like that!
Us: *frantically taking notes for what will keep Mom happy*
Cheerful Girl: Okay!
Now in our case, CG didn't actually decide she was from the land of unicorns, but the pressure was definitely there, and I think if the adults in our lives had been more involved in our imaginative world when we were really young (under 10) it might have gone differently. Multiplicity does not HAVE to be a defense mechanism, but *for us* it absolutely was, and to some extent we produced what we got told to produce. It would not even have to be an abusive parent saying so -- your high school English teacher whose approval means everything to you says that she adores Elinor in Sense & Sensibility? Quick, see if that works better. Your first serious boyfriend has a thing for Rei from Evangelion? Hmmm, well, if it makes him happy... because, after all, in early childhood, for us at least, keeping people happy seemed to be the difference between surviving and not surviving.
For us the therapeutic battle was not becoming One Person (which one? what kind of person?) but:
1. As a system, to come to grips with the fact that the bad times are over and we do not in fact have to produce whatever our nearest and dearest want to keep them happy -- so there's no reason to create a 1950s housewife just because someone we're dating is turned on by the idea. In some ways we figured this out after we left home (20+ years ago), but in other ways it just really came into focus in the last few years.
2. Individually, for people like the Cheerful Girl above to figure out that she can have an entire range of human emotions, and not just be the stereotype she had to embody to start. This part, definitely still a work in progress, some people are very far along that path and some people are annoyed at the idea that being a pissed off soldier 24/7 is not actually very self-fulfilling. :-)
That ended up being very long but I hope it is interesting!
posted by brynplusplus at 12:27 PM on June 8, 2015 [24 favorites]
Other people have already answered about this, but since I am part of a multiple system myself, I thought I would say what I think.
For background: we are a pretty traditional multiple system in terms of having had really significant trauma, having been diagnosed with DID, having done some good therapy (and some really bad therapy) and having eventually come to a place in our lives where we are all in communication and mostly on good terms with each other, and are much busier *living our lives* than we are worrying about being multiple. And as it happens, we do not have anyone in here (that I know about, some people are very very quiet about themselves) who identifies as being from a fictional world.
But... I think we easily could have, if things had gone differently, because a lot of people in here crystallised around very specific sets of experiences in ways that were trying to keep people with power happy, and some of that was happening at the same time as reading and imagining a lot of stuff. Some of the stuff we read and imagined was shared with adults, and those adults definitely (unknowingly) manipulated our multiplicity for their own purposes. So imagine a conversation like this:
Mom: You're in an awful mood today, what's wrong with you?
Person Fronting: ... (because they are in an awful mood because, say, an hour ago mom hit them)
Mom: Well, cut that out. I want to see that cheerful girl who is always smiling!
Us: *produces cheerful girl who is always smiling ASAP*
Mom: That's better! What are you reading?
Cheerful Girl: I'm reading a book about unicorns!
Mom: Oh, I've read that one! You should try to be more like character-in-book, she's *really a cheerful girl who is always smiling* and I would love to have a daughter like that!
Us: *frantically taking notes for what will keep Mom happy*
Cheerful Girl: Okay!
Now in our case, CG didn't actually decide she was from the land of unicorns, but the pressure was definitely there, and I think if the adults in our lives had been more involved in our imaginative world when we were really young (under 10) it might have gone differently. Multiplicity does not HAVE to be a defense mechanism, but *for us* it absolutely was, and to some extent we produced what we got told to produce. It would not even have to be an abusive parent saying so -- your high school English teacher whose approval means everything to you says that she adores Elinor in Sense & Sensibility? Quick, see if that works better. Your first serious boyfriend has a thing for Rei from Evangelion? Hmmm, well, if it makes him happy... because, after all, in early childhood, for us at least, keeping people happy seemed to be the difference between surviving and not surviving.
For us the therapeutic battle was not becoming One Person (which one? what kind of person?) but:
1. As a system, to come to grips with the fact that the bad times are over and we do not in fact have to produce whatever our nearest and dearest want to keep them happy -- so there's no reason to create a 1950s housewife just because someone we're dating is turned on by the idea. In some ways we figured this out after we left home (20+ years ago), but in other ways it just really came into focus in the last few years.
2. Individually, for people like the Cheerful Girl above to figure out that she can have an entire range of human emotions, and not just be the stereotype she had to embody to start. This part, definitely still a work in progress, some people are very far along that path and some people are annoyed at the idea that being a pissed off soldier 24/7 is not actually very self-fulfilling. :-)
That ended up being very long but I hope it is interesting!
posted by brynplusplus at 12:27 PM on June 8, 2015 [24 favorites]
What's the difference between one person who feels radically different at various times and a person who describes those radical differences as separate selves?
Well, I always feel like me; it is not like I go away just because I am not at the front. Just because *to you* it looks like one person who feels radically different at different times, does not mean that we are not persistent to ourselves. I am always 15, I always have reddish hair, I am always mildly annoyed that I am in this totally grown-up almost-40 body and cannot hang out with people my own age without it being creepy. When I am not front I am still there being like this, it is just what the outside world sees that is different.
This is one of those questions we have been asked as a system a lot of times and every time it always floors me. Not because it is a bad question -- it isn't! -- but because it highlights for me how different the world is for singletons. Honestly for me sometimes it is hard to remember the other way around.
posted by brynplusplus at 12:38 PM on June 8, 2015 [3 favorites]
Well, I always feel like me; it is not like I go away just because I am not at the front. Just because *to you* it looks like one person who feels radically different at different times, does not mean that we are not persistent to ourselves. I am always 15, I always have reddish hair, I am always mildly annoyed that I am in this totally grown-up almost-40 body and cannot hang out with people my own age without it being creepy. When I am not front I am still there being like this, it is just what the outside world sees that is different.
This is one of those questions we have been asked as a system a lot of times and every time it always floors me. Not because it is a bad question -- it isn't! -- but because it highlights for me how different the world is for singletons. Honestly for me sometimes it is hard to remember the other way around.
posted by brynplusplus at 12:38 PM on June 8, 2015 [3 favorites]
I think the issue is that it's like when people say off hand, "oh my god, I'm so OCD about my filing system! The labels always have to be in the same font lol!" And it's like, that's not OCD. It's shitty for people with real, diagnosed OCD to see people using the term in a way that minimizes their very real disorder, a disorder that may very well have a significant negative impact on their life. I tend to think we're past the point of no return when it comes to popular use of "depressed," because almost everyone can tell the difference between "ugh, I finished all of House of Cards and I'm so depressed now," and "my aunt died, and dealing with my depression is really tough right now." But for other mental illness terms like "schizo" or bipolar or OCD, I think we really should push back against that kind of common, trivializing usage of hyperbole.
So it's not so much about some sort of potential social spread of mental illness, so much as a bunch of people seemingly "crying wolf" or hyperbolizing can minimize or trivialize a real disorder. Having the main mental association for a disorder be "oh those teenagers think fictional characters live in their head" contributes to an environment where people feel free to dismiss real disorders as attention seeking or faking it. Obviously in a perfect world, this wouldn't be the case. But this is the world where, for example, a lot of women have trouble having their medical concerns taken seriously because obviously everything comes back down to nebulous lady troubles or they're overreacting or whatever.
posted by yasaman at 12:42 PM on June 8, 2015 [1 favorite]
So it's not so much about some sort of potential social spread of mental illness, so much as a bunch of people seemingly "crying wolf" or hyperbolizing can minimize or trivialize a real disorder. Having the main mental association for a disorder be "oh those teenagers think fictional characters live in their head" contributes to an environment where people feel free to dismiss real disorders as attention seeking or faking it. Obviously in a perfect world, this wouldn't be the case. But this is the world where, for example, a lot of women have trouble having their medical concerns taken seriously because obviously everything comes back down to nebulous lady troubles or they're overreacting or whatever.
posted by yasaman at 12:42 PM on June 8, 2015 [1 favorite]
brynplusplus, if you feel like answering any additional questions:
How do you experience switching between people fronting? How do you experience personalities communicating between each other? Do you know what the other ones know, mostly? (Like if I tell Cheerful Girl that there's leftover pizza in the fridge, does Angry Soldier know to get some later?)
Are you sort of "joined at the back" somehow, so there's some....I don't know....common substrate?
Does it keep you from being lonely?
I find your comments very clarifying and appreciate them a lot.
posted by Frowner at 12:44 PM on June 8, 2015
How do you experience switching between people fronting? How do you experience personalities communicating between each other? Do you know what the other ones know, mostly? (Like if I tell Cheerful Girl that there's leftover pizza in the fridge, does Angry Soldier know to get some later?)
Are you sort of "joined at the back" somehow, so there's some....I don't know....common substrate?
Does it keep you from being lonely?
I find your comments very clarifying and appreciate them a lot.
posted by Frowner at 12:44 PM on June 8, 2015
I actually kind of love answering questions, after all I am 15. (I would make a joke here about being an attention-seeking teenager but that actually kind of makes me feel sick to my stomach, that maybe someone out there is judging me like that.)
How do you experience switching between people fronting?
Hmmm, it depends on the kind of switch.
Sometimes it is like this. Imagine you are in a really boring meeting and so you quit paying attention to what the people are talking about and start pursuing your own train of thought about how you'd like to paint your nails to look like ladybugs and do you actually have the nail polish you need or would you need to go buy some, and speaking of buying stuff could you get a latte after work or would it keep you up all night? And meanwhile the meeting is still going on and you can hear the boring person talking and if they said your name you could start paying real attention, but right now, why bother?
Now I think most single people have done that, except when I start thinking about nail polish and let go of the front, someone who wants to pay attention to the meeting (or at least feels responsible for doing so) takes over the front and discusses budget requirements or whatever it is people do in meetings. :-) And I know it is taken care of so I can just think about my own things, but I am almost always paying a /tiny/ bit of attention to the front in case, you know, there is suddenly free meeting cake or something else nice.
That is one kind of switch, on purpose but gradual. We can also switch very quickly -- we are out to the people we are intimate with, and I do not do the sexy fun times yet, so if we are hanging out with our partner and the energy is going in that direction I might say, 'I'll see you later!' and let someone who would like to do that kind of thing come front. For me it is like ... I am still aware of the body and what is going on but it is suddenly much farther away, 'over there' and I can just not pay attention at all and do my own things, or go to sleep, or whatever.
How do you experience personalities communicating between each other? Do you know what the other ones know, mostly? (Like if I tell Cheerful Girl that there's leftover pizza in the fridge, does Angry Soldier know to get some later?)
There are different kinds of communicating. The deepest is not in words, it is ... feelings and thought and experience. If CG came and gave me a hug, it is not the words of it, it is the experience of being hugged (for me) and hugging (for her) and for other people in our system who are close by, of seeing people hug, or sort of the feeling of it, being in a room where people are hugging. It is different than having it happen in the body, but I do feel it in a physical kind of way.
Then there is talking in words, just like any kind of conversation; if someone is talking to me they are talking, and I can pay attention or not pay attention, or at least try not to. :-) If other people are talking to each other and they are nearby (or being very loud) I can overhear it, if it is farther away it is just a kind of low hum or a faint sense of it.
About information, we don't know what happened to people privately in the past unless they choose to share it, but in the present day, mostly yes. If you tell CG there's leftover pizza, AS will know because if she's awake she's paying that tiny bit of attention to what is happening at the front, like I talked about in the meeting example. If AS is asleep, she doesn't magically know when she wakes up, but the first thing she'd do is kind of check out what happened while she wasn't watching, which is like ... glancing at a whiteboard in a shared house? That kind of feeling except we don't have to deliberately write anything down, it is just the shared experience that is our life. Although if it was pizza she'd probably hear a chorus of 'HEY PIZZA OVER HERE" as soon as she woke up, she's pretty crazy for pizza. :-)
If the information is something nobody cares about (there's a cilantro milkshake in the fridge!) of course we might just forget, like anyone else.
Are you sort of "joined at the back" somehow, so there's some....I don't know....common substrate?
Yes, definitely. I cannot imagine how it would work without that. I am not sure what to call it our how to describe it, but we are definitely /part of a system/ -- we have always said like an ecosystem, everyone draws from and feeds everyone else. I think if we were not we would not be able to communicate outside of words.
Does it keep you from being lonely?
No, definitely not. I mean, I am sure there might be some ways I am not lonely that other people are, but I am still 15 in this body that is almost 40, and I am lonely for people /my own age/ to talk to who would actually see me as a peer, which is impossible. I like being part of a system in lots of ways, but just like you can be part of a very good healthy family and still feel lonely even in the midst of love and support, I am totally capable of being multiple and lonely, all of us are.
I find your comments very clarifying and appreciate them a lot.
Thank you! I liked your questions very much, especially that substrate one, nobody has ever asked that before. If you (or anyone else) has more I do not mind. :-)
posted by brynplusplus at 1:27 PM on June 8, 2015 [8 favorites]
How do you experience switching between people fronting?
Hmmm, it depends on the kind of switch.
Sometimes it is like this. Imagine you are in a really boring meeting and so you quit paying attention to what the people are talking about and start pursuing your own train of thought about how you'd like to paint your nails to look like ladybugs and do you actually have the nail polish you need or would you need to go buy some, and speaking of buying stuff could you get a latte after work or would it keep you up all night? And meanwhile the meeting is still going on and you can hear the boring person talking and if they said your name you could start paying real attention, but right now, why bother?
Now I think most single people have done that, except when I start thinking about nail polish and let go of the front, someone who wants to pay attention to the meeting (or at least feels responsible for doing so) takes over the front and discusses budget requirements or whatever it is people do in meetings. :-) And I know it is taken care of so I can just think about my own things, but I am almost always paying a /tiny/ bit of attention to the front in case, you know, there is suddenly free meeting cake or something else nice.
That is one kind of switch, on purpose but gradual. We can also switch very quickly -- we are out to the people we are intimate with, and I do not do the sexy fun times yet, so if we are hanging out with our partner and the energy is going in that direction I might say, 'I'll see you later!' and let someone who would like to do that kind of thing come front. For me it is like ... I am still aware of the body and what is going on but it is suddenly much farther away, 'over there' and I can just not pay attention at all and do my own things, or go to sleep, or whatever.
How do you experience personalities communicating between each other? Do you know what the other ones know, mostly? (Like if I tell Cheerful Girl that there's leftover pizza in the fridge, does Angry Soldier know to get some later?)
There are different kinds of communicating. The deepest is not in words, it is ... feelings and thought and experience. If CG came and gave me a hug, it is not the words of it, it is the experience of being hugged (for me) and hugging (for her) and for other people in our system who are close by, of seeing people hug, or sort of the feeling of it, being in a room where people are hugging. It is different than having it happen in the body, but I do feel it in a physical kind of way.
Then there is talking in words, just like any kind of conversation; if someone is talking to me they are talking, and I can pay attention or not pay attention, or at least try not to. :-) If other people are talking to each other and they are nearby (or being very loud) I can overhear it, if it is farther away it is just a kind of low hum or a faint sense of it.
About information, we don't know what happened to people privately in the past unless they choose to share it, but in the present day, mostly yes. If you tell CG there's leftover pizza, AS will know because if she's awake she's paying that tiny bit of attention to what is happening at the front, like I talked about in the meeting example. If AS is asleep, she doesn't magically know when she wakes up, but the first thing she'd do is kind of check out what happened while she wasn't watching, which is like ... glancing at a whiteboard in a shared house? That kind of feeling except we don't have to deliberately write anything down, it is just the shared experience that is our life. Although if it was pizza she'd probably hear a chorus of 'HEY PIZZA OVER HERE" as soon as she woke up, she's pretty crazy for pizza. :-)
If the information is something nobody cares about (there's a cilantro milkshake in the fridge!) of course we might just forget, like anyone else.
Are you sort of "joined at the back" somehow, so there's some....I don't know....common substrate?
Yes, definitely. I cannot imagine how it would work without that. I am not sure what to call it our how to describe it, but we are definitely /part of a system/ -- we have always said like an ecosystem, everyone draws from and feeds everyone else. I think if we were not we would not be able to communicate outside of words.
Does it keep you from being lonely?
No, definitely not. I mean, I am sure there might be some ways I am not lonely that other people are, but I am still 15 in this body that is almost 40, and I am lonely for people /my own age/ to talk to who would actually see me as a peer, which is impossible. I like being part of a system in lots of ways, but just like you can be part of a very good healthy family and still feel lonely even in the midst of love and support, I am totally capable of being multiple and lonely, all of us are.
I find your comments very clarifying and appreciate them a lot.
Thank you! I liked your questions very much, especially that substrate one, nobody has ever asked that before. If you (or anyone else) has more I do not mind. :-)
posted by brynplusplus at 1:27 PM on June 8, 2015 [8 favorites]
Thanks for talking to us about this! When you say "what happened to people privately in the past," what is the past? What experiences might one person have that the others don't have, and how would that have happened, or would those be things that were experienced in the body while one particular personality was fronting that affected that personality much more?
This is very interesting and helpful, thank you!
posted by ostro at 2:22 PM on June 8, 2015
This is very interesting and helpful, thank you!
posted by ostro at 2:22 PM on June 8, 2015
It's shitty for people with real, diagnosed OCD to see people using the term in a way that minimizes their very real disorder, a disorder that may very well have a significant negative impact on their life
Well, to clearly out myself, I am an officially-diagnosed PTSD-having DID relatively classically-presenting initially multiple; I was diagnosed in the pre-Livejournal era and I have had my moments of frustration about the way multiplicity is treated badly by everyone from Dr. Phil to the endless serial killer tropes for sure.
From my point of view, it's really not the empowered multiples in the Vice article that cause me grief, it's not being able to discuss pain relief seriously with my dentist or doctor because discussing that our reactions to pain will be different will just get me dismissed as a faker...even if what I want is fewer pain meds, or time in between procedures.
It's the fact that if someone presents having OCD as a reason for their skin being raw, most professionals will at least accept that whether they have a deep understanding of it or not, whether some kids on the Internet are calling themselves OCD on Twitter or not, but I end up in a philosophical discussion (not that I always mind, but) about the nature of the human soul and spirit and soulbonds and iatrogenic satanic abuse nightmares from 1988.
And generally the conclusion is that I am speaking coherently and haven't done anything crazy yet therefore I am lying instead. It's kind of an all Cretans are liars situation out here on the ground.
And of course the reason is, people don't believe me. I don't say that with great ire but I find it kind of funny. I have PTSD twice over; I have it from childhood abuse and it flared up after a botched labour in which I almost died and my baby did die later, and I have never, ever had to present my PTSD credentials to be taken seriously. But DID, man, you cannot just say you have that.
I am musing right now that in this thread it looks like three posters are multiple, one is a supporter of someone multiple, and one is a spouse. And yet, the cultural narrative is still that it's incredibly rare and no one really has it and all the teens are making it up for attention. Yay Bryn for taking all the questions.
posted by warriorqueen at 2:24 PM on June 8, 2015 [12 favorites]
Well, to clearly out myself, I am an officially-diagnosed PTSD-having DID relatively classically-presenting initially multiple; I was diagnosed in the pre-Livejournal era and I have had my moments of frustration about the way multiplicity is treated badly by everyone from Dr. Phil to the endless serial killer tropes for sure.
From my point of view, it's really not the empowered multiples in the Vice article that cause me grief, it's not being able to discuss pain relief seriously with my dentist or doctor because discussing that our reactions to pain will be different will just get me dismissed as a faker...even if what I want is fewer pain meds, or time in between procedures.
It's the fact that if someone presents having OCD as a reason for their skin being raw, most professionals will at least accept that whether they have a deep understanding of it or not, whether some kids on the Internet are calling themselves OCD on Twitter or not, but I end up in a philosophical discussion (not that I always mind, but) about the nature of the human soul and spirit and soulbonds and iatrogenic satanic abuse nightmares from 1988.
And generally the conclusion is that I am speaking coherently and haven't done anything crazy yet therefore I am lying instead. It's kind of an all Cretans are liars situation out here on the ground.
And of course the reason is, people don't believe me. I don't say that with great ire but I find it kind of funny. I have PTSD twice over; I have it from childhood abuse and it flared up after a botched labour in which I almost died and my baby did die later, and I have never, ever had to present my PTSD credentials to be taken seriously. But DID, man, you cannot just say you have that.
I am musing right now that in this thread it looks like three posters are multiple, one is a supporter of someone multiple, and one is a spouse. And yet, the cultural narrative is still that it's incredibly rare and no one really has it and all the teens are making it up for attention. Yay Bryn for taking all the questions.
posted by warriorqueen at 2:24 PM on June 8, 2015 [12 favorites]
Studies suggest the prevalence of DID is between 0.1% and 1%. Metafilter has 12,000 regular users. So we should expect to see 12 to 120 DID users. (Insert sock pocket jokes here.)
Whether teens are making it up is sort of a function of the prevalence of DID, but only related to another prevalence. It's also a function of false positives of DID, for instance from self-diagnosis. Say 3% of teens will experience DID symptoms from another source or otherwise fabricate. That means that if the true prevalence is 1%, then a therapist presented with DID symptoms in a teenager should think that there is only a 33% chance that the right diagnosis is DID. If the true prevalence is 0.1%, then there's only a 3.2% chance that DID is the right diagnosis.
Google suggests that therapeutic prevalence of DID is half-to-one percent. So if a teen comes to a therapist with DID symptoms, they probably don't have DID.
posted by anotherpanacea at 4:11 PM on June 8, 2015
Whether teens are making it up is sort of a function of the prevalence of DID, but only related to another prevalence. It's also a function of false positives of DID, for instance from self-diagnosis. Say 3% of teens will experience DID symptoms from another source or otherwise fabricate. That means that if the true prevalence is 1%, then a therapist presented with DID symptoms in a teenager should think that there is only a 33% chance that the right diagnosis is DID. If the true prevalence is 0.1%, then there's only a 3.2% chance that DID is the right diagnosis.
Google suggests that therapeutic prevalence of DID is half-to-one percent. So if a teen comes to a therapist with DID symptoms, they probably don't have DID.
posted by anotherpanacea at 4:11 PM on June 8, 2015
Interesting coincidence that I had just finished listening to this audio presentation prior to reading this FPP.
posted by RoseyD at 4:12 PM on June 8, 2015
posted by RoseyD at 4:12 PM on June 8, 2015
The linked article and the comments here have made for very interesting reading. I think in certain ways I have a harder time wrapping my mind around some of the terms used (system, multiples, fronting) than I do with the concepts themselves, mostly because I have pretty fixed definitions of those words in my head, but that's true with everything, I suppose. Words like "ship" and "canon" have very specific definitions in fandom circles that someone not involved in fandom wouldn't necessarily get.
The concept itself doesn't seem that far fetched considering all the many things that show up in the study of neuroscience and psychology, some of which might seem like they come from science fiction or fantasy literature. There's the famous case study of H.M. or split-brain patients mentioned above. There are disorders like Capgras Delusion and Conversion Disorder.
I guess my point is, the brain is a weird and mysterious organ, and what we like to think of as "reality" and "free will" and "personality" are probably a lot more complicated and less fixed than we can even really begin to comprehend.
posted by litera scripta manet at 4:36 PM on June 8, 2015
The concept itself doesn't seem that far fetched considering all the many things that show up in the study of neuroscience and psychology, some of which might seem like they come from science fiction or fantasy literature. There's the famous case study of H.M. or split-brain patients mentioned above. There are disorders like Capgras Delusion and Conversion Disorder.
I guess my point is, the brain is a weird and mysterious organ, and what we like to think of as "reality" and "free will" and "personality" are probably a lot more complicated and less fixed than we can even really begin to comprehend.
posted by litera scripta manet at 4:36 PM on June 8, 2015
Arguments from statistics only make sense if you actually have statistics for everything; you can't cite one statistic from studies and then say 'And let's just make this one up.'
There are 41,844,000 between 10-19 in the US as of 2012, according to the US Census and 5 seconds of Googling. If 1% of them have DID, then that's 418440 people with DID. Why can't 100 of them be on Tumblr acting in ways that make whoever is reading this roll their eyes and go 'obviously DID is just teenagers seeking attention'?
And more importantly to me... why does it matter? Why is there this enormous rush to police the reality of other people's experience and judge whether or not what they are doing is okay? I, like warriorqueen, have been much more harmed by the people who refuse to believe what my reality is -- and believe me, we as a system have been encountering those people for 20+ years, those people have always been there, they did not just happen since teenagers got onto Tumblr and started talking about their headmates and fictives.
posted by brynplusplus at 5:04 PM on June 8, 2015 [4 favorites]
There are 41,844,000 between 10-19 in the US as of 2012, according to the US Census and 5 seconds of Googling. If 1% of them have DID, then that's 418440 people with DID. Why can't 100 of them be on Tumblr acting in ways that make whoever is reading this roll their eyes and go 'obviously DID is just teenagers seeking attention'?
And more importantly to me... why does it matter? Why is there this enormous rush to police the reality of other people's experience and judge whether or not what they are doing is okay? I, like warriorqueen, have been much more harmed by the people who refuse to believe what my reality is -- and believe me, we as a system have been encountering those people for 20+ years, those people have always been there, they did not just happen since teenagers got onto Tumblr and started talking about their headmates and fictives.
posted by brynplusplus at 5:04 PM on June 8, 2015 [4 favorites]
But I get so frustrated at the concept that If Only We Could Know when it's been 30+ years of people talking about it and I've been following it for like, 17. I really appreciate your comments GenjiandProust, it's just...if we can't believe people because they might be fame-seeking, and we can't study it 'cause it's rare, well then it's kind of a double-bind of self-expression.
I think I expressed myself badly. I have no intention of discounting your experience; I really don't have any basis to do that, and, as a general rule, I assume MeFites know their own experience and are relating it as truthfully as possible. Plus, as I described above, I have personal experience that strongly suggests DID is a real thing, even if my transient experience gives me no insight into what living with DID is like, and I certainly have no idea what it "is." There is too much we don't know.
Thirty years is not a very long time to study something, especially when both the evidence and data collection is subjective by nature. That there are massive holes in our knowledge is not proof that something doesn't happen, much less that it doesn't feel the way that people experiencing it says it does.
However, being a highly sensationalized condition, DID is really attractive to theorizing along the lines of "can X religious experience be explained via DID?" and I don't think that's a very fruitful direction for though because you are always going to answer "we really don't know."
Anyway, none of this means that you and the other members who are sharing their experiences are deluded or wrong or don't know your own lives. There are plenty of things that we don't have definite explanations for that definitely exist. Sorry if I expressed that badly.
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:16 PM on June 8, 2015 [1 favorite]
I think I expressed myself badly. I have no intention of discounting your experience; I really don't have any basis to do that, and, as a general rule, I assume MeFites know their own experience and are relating it as truthfully as possible. Plus, as I described above, I have personal experience that strongly suggests DID is a real thing, even if my transient experience gives me no insight into what living with DID is like, and I certainly have no idea what it "is." There is too much we don't know.
Thirty years is not a very long time to study something, especially when both the evidence and data collection is subjective by nature. That there are massive holes in our knowledge is not proof that something doesn't happen, much less that it doesn't feel the way that people experiencing it says it does.
However, being a highly sensationalized condition, DID is really attractive to theorizing along the lines of "can X religious experience be explained via DID?" and I don't think that's a very fruitful direction for though because you are always going to answer "we really don't know."
Anyway, none of this means that you and the other members who are sharing their experiences are deluded or wrong or don't know your own lives. There are plenty of things that we don't have definite explanations for that definitely exist. Sorry if I expressed that badly.
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:16 PM on June 8, 2015 [1 favorite]
Anotherpanacea: As someone who has an LCSW and works in the field I can tell you that I've run into one case of someone claiming DID in my last 5 years of work. And that person only vaugely claimed and didn't even know of the word dissociation. I unfortunately am not their therapist, so my work is limited. In my last five years I have not seen a single person who has ANY form of dissociation as their disability.
There isn't a whole bunch of people running around telling that they have multiple personalities at least among the population (homeless adults) that I work with. It really is rare.
In addition many people with DID will be in the mental health system for a long time. So they may go from therapist to therapist increasing numbers.
posted by AlexiaSky at 5:17 PM on June 8, 2015
There isn't a whole bunch of people running around telling that they have multiple personalities at least among the population (homeless adults) that I work with. It really is rare.
In addition many people with DID will be in the mental health system for a long time. So they may go from therapist to therapist increasing numbers.
posted by AlexiaSky at 5:17 PM on June 8, 2015
Actually please ignore that last paragraph my brain was thinking something else but it doesn't make sense here in this context.
posted by AlexiaSky at 5:19 PM on June 8, 2015
posted by AlexiaSky at 5:19 PM on June 8, 2015
1% seems high to me but even 1:1,000 is not so rare.
If I were homeless the last thing I would present as is multiple. But I don't think I know any multiples who needed serious help with their multiplicity who presented as multiple anyway. I didn't..."I" being complex here but basically the motivating factors were a) huge anxiety brought on by not being able to remember what I did at work all day and b) my example above about the clothes being gone? I freaked out at my husband for throwing out my clothes and a bunch of other things that he "did" that resulted in arguments and I wanted a better marriage and c) way down at the bottom of the list oh yeah well I was abused as a kid but it was no big deal really.
I can totally see a life where I ended up on anti-anxiety meds, divorced from the argumentative jerk who threw out my stuff, in a less demanding job, and spacing out every weekend.
But luckily instead I ended up with a therapist who helped me understand little things like...when other people say that an argument is "water under the bridge" they don't mean they literally have never apologized for anything in their lives ever.
But I never had; someone else in my system did, which I did not grasp. So my experience was "husbands love you no matter what you say!" So I rarely self-censored and my spouse was okay after sort of a week's worth of...whatever....
Teresa's experience was "my husband is mad at me all the time and I am constantly apologizing but I don't know why."
Now if only one person had gone to therapy how would the therapist know what the issue really was? It took a therapist who was perceptive enough to ask questions related to the gaps in time, and it took us being able to express tiny niggling doubts as ourselves enough for that to come through.
I do not know how you would sort that out against addiction or being legitimately paranoid living on the street or disoriented.
In a way I think to be identified as multiple without someone like a partner helping, you have to be in a range where your multiplicity has failed enough that you are noticing the gaps, but not enough that you have developed a problem that supersedes it. I think that with the internet now it is possible people in that range might self-identify more easily though.
posted by warriorqueen at 6:02 PM on June 8, 2015 [6 favorites]
If I were homeless the last thing I would present as is multiple. But I don't think I know any multiples who needed serious help with their multiplicity who presented as multiple anyway. I didn't..."I" being complex here but basically the motivating factors were a) huge anxiety brought on by not being able to remember what I did at work all day and b) my example above about the clothes being gone? I freaked out at my husband for throwing out my clothes and a bunch of other things that he "did" that resulted in arguments and I wanted a better marriage and c) way down at the bottom of the list oh yeah well I was abused as a kid but it was no big deal really.
I can totally see a life where I ended up on anti-anxiety meds, divorced from the argumentative jerk who threw out my stuff, in a less demanding job, and spacing out every weekend.
But luckily instead I ended up with a therapist who helped me understand little things like...when other people say that an argument is "water under the bridge" they don't mean they literally have never apologized for anything in their lives ever.
But I never had; someone else in my system did, which I did not grasp. So my experience was "husbands love you no matter what you say!" So I rarely self-censored and my spouse was okay after sort of a week's worth of...whatever....
Teresa's experience was "my husband is mad at me all the time and I am constantly apologizing but I don't know why."
Now if only one person had gone to therapy how would the therapist know what the issue really was? It took a therapist who was perceptive enough to ask questions related to the gaps in time, and it took us being able to express tiny niggling doubts as ourselves enough for that to come through.
I do not know how you would sort that out against addiction or being legitimately paranoid living on the street or disoriented.
In a way I think to be identified as multiple without someone like a partner helping, you have to be in a range where your multiplicity has failed enough that you are noticing the gaps, but not enough that you have developed a problem that supersedes it. I think that with the internet now it is possible people in that range might self-identify more easily though.
posted by warriorqueen at 6:02 PM on June 8, 2015 [6 favorites]
brynplusplus: "That ended up being very long but I hope it is interesting!"
No worries. It was. And enlightening to boot. Cheers!
posted by Samizdata at 6:23 PM on June 8, 2015
No worries. It was. And enlightening to boot. Cheers!
posted by Samizdata at 6:23 PM on June 8, 2015
Which is exactly why I said in the population I work with.
The reality of getting accessible treatment for DID with all the controversy around it is most likely poor at best. I think there are less than 10 inpatient hospitals in the USA that specialize in disossociative disorders.
posted by AlexiaSky at 6:37 PM on June 8, 2015 [1 favorite]
The reality of getting accessible treatment for DID with all the controversy around it is most likely poor at best. I think there are less than 10 inpatient hospitals in the USA that specialize in disossociative disorders.
posted by AlexiaSky at 6:37 PM on June 8, 2015 [1 favorite]
I really want to thank those who've shared their experiences with multiplicity; it's been really illuminating and has answered some questions I've always had but never had anyone that I knew of to ask.
posted by padraigin at 8:45 PM on June 8, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by padraigin at 8:45 PM on June 8, 2015 [1 favorite]
Yes, thankyou for being open to the discussion, it's been very educational! Are there any other good-quality reads on the subject, apart from what's been mentioned already?
posted by harriet vane at 12:14 AM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by harriet vane at 12:14 AM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]
I can't really accept the facets being born to personify popular anime RPGs. Anyone?
It might help to look at it this way - what does it harm to accept that is someone else's reality even if you can't imagine it? By and large, if someone is going to be formally diagnosed with DID, it will be after a long period of interaction with a clinician, something which is a fairly high bar for people for a wide variety of reasons. Kindness and compassion is free, however, and if anyone deserves it it's people who struggle - whether that would be "officially" diagnosed or not.
It's not believing people who are suffering that causes problems; it's judging and policing them.
I have one client I suspect of being DID, but aside for tracking for safety I'm mostly leaving it fallow because it isn't a fruitful line of inquiry right now, and changing their diagnosis would not help in any way - in terms of benefits, schizophrenia is a far more useful and unquestioned diagnosis (and I suspect they have that as well, so there you go).
Book wise, The Magic Daughter is the story of a system and some of their experience with therapy. They began to integrate, but not in a forced sort of way, but rather some of the children wanted to "grow up" and that resulted in them becoming part of the facing alter while still being mourned by her and her therapist because they were lost as distinct alters. She specifically talks about how writing the book facilitated the system's changes because it caused many of them to realize they were present for different fragments of the same experiences.
posted by Deoridhe at 12:44 AM on June 9, 2015 [6 favorites]
It might help to look at it this way - what does it harm to accept that is someone else's reality even if you can't imagine it? By and large, if someone is going to be formally diagnosed with DID, it will be after a long period of interaction with a clinician, something which is a fairly high bar for people for a wide variety of reasons. Kindness and compassion is free, however, and if anyone deserves it it's people who struggle - whether that would be "officially" diagnosed or not.
It's not believing people who are suffering that causes problems; it's judging and policing them.
I have one client I suspect of being DID, but aside for tracking for safety I'm mostly leaving it fallow because it isn't a fruitful line of inquiry right now, and changing their diagnosis would not help in any way - in terms of benefits, schizophrenia is a far more useful and unquestioned diagnosis (and I suspect they have that as well, so there you go).
Book wise, The Magic Daughter is the story of a system and some of their experience with therapy. They began to integrate, but not in a forced sort of way, but rather some of the children wanted to "grow up" and that resulted in them becoming part of the facing alter while still being mourned by her and her therapist because they were lost as distinct alters. She specifically talks about how writing the book facilitated the system's changes because it caused many of them to realize they were present for different fragments of the same experiences.
posted by Deoridhe at 12:44 AM on June 9, 2015 [6 favorites]
Thanks everyone for their patience; I clearly need to revive my blog or chill out on the topic. For a further reading list I liked The Magic Daughter; there's also:
The Stranger in the Mirror, Dr. Marlene Steinberg
The Myth of Sanity, Martha Stout
The Flock was an okay memoir
MeMail works for me if anyone has burning questions, even just curiosity. :)
posted by warriorqueen at 7:16 AM on June 9, 2015 [5 favorites]
The Stranger in the Mirror, Dr. Marlene Steinberg
The Myth of Sanity, Martha Stout
The Flock was an okay memoir
MeMail works for me if anyone has burning questions, even just curiosity. :)
posted by warriorqueen at 7:16 AM on June 9, 2015 [5 favorites]
When you say "what happened to people privately in the past," what is the past? What experiences might one person have that the others don't have, and how would that have happened, or would those be things that were experienced in the body while one particular personality was fronting that affected that personality much more?
What I had in mind when I wrote it was the distant past, when there was a lot of trauma and we still had very firm dissociative barriers.
But the more I think about it, the less simple it is. I said earlier that for us multiplicity was a defense mechanism, and it certainly was, but it was not so that there could be some special snowflake Real Person who didn't know about the trauma. (Some people didn't know, but that was not much of a system advantage for us; they couldn't navigate properly.) Talking it over internally today, I think for us multiplicity was fundamentally a way of attempting to meet the demands of a wide variety of adults who had power over us in early childhood, and also a way of trying to *get our own needs met* -- often at each other's expense.
When I first knew myself as a person I did not have the word multiple to describe my experience, but I was aware that there were people inside watching me, just like there were people outside. I figured out pretty quickly that there were things you didn't talk about outside, and there were things you didn't talk about inside. There were times when what was happening at the front was open to seeing, and times when it was closed, like ... a curtain being pulled or a wall going up. Sometimes I am sure I lost time in that stereotypical way, but other times I just couldn't get to where the front space was, and that was fine, back then I didn't really care.
The idea of this happening for things that were traumatic is pretty standard, it is in all the clinical literature, but for us it was not just about trauma, it was also about territory. Just like our outside kids argue over who gets to play Elsa in Frozen, people would compete over who got the good parts of the time, the chance to buy candy at the convenience store and eat it in private or the chance to pick out a new book. Even when time had passed and the trauma was largely over, people still competed; in high school one girl wanted to be a sort of ordinary semi-popular teenager, and she fought tooth and nail with the person who was more of a weird theatre type, and neither of them were crazy about the geeky computer person or the spooky choir/creative writing girl. So that curtain would come down not just to keep trauma isolated, but so that people could get to live their own life, meeting their own needs, without having to compete or share with anyone else. Nobody wanted to risk someone else messing up their relationship, and nobody wanted to share with people who didn't 'deserve' it -- who hadn't 'done the work' to earn whatever the good thing was.
(Of course a lot of the time we didn't have this much control over things, stuff just happened, people ended up out, the curtain ended up down or not -- but as a system we were very heavily invested in the belief that we were controlling/choosing everything, including all the trauma, and so it was very natural to come up with a narrative about competing or not sharing, and over time those narratives became more true.)
It was not a very satisfying way to live and it went on that way a lot longer than was really necessary, and even after the curtain quit coming down -- things quit being private -- we still tended to compete intensely and divide up our lives and time in a very... ungenerous way. For us letting go of that and letting things be more free-flowing was a big positive change, and it is really the exact same change as not trying to meet the needs of everyone in our life by providing the Exactly Right Person.
I hope that makes some sense, it is a little challenging to figure out how to talk about without writing an epic essay. :-) I am still happy to answer questions here in the thread or privately through the mail. And it is an open offer, just in case someone finds this thread in a week and wonders. :-)
posted by brynplusplus at 1:04 PM on June 9, 2015 [10 favorites]
What I had in mind when I wrote it was the distant past, when there was a lot of trauma and we still had very firm dissociative barriers.
But the more I think about it, the less simple it is. I said earlier that for us multiplicity was a defense mechanism, and it certainly was, but it was not so that there could be some special snowflake Real Person who didn't know about the trauma. (Some people didn't know, but that was not much of a system advantage for us; they couldn't navigate properly.) Talking it over internally today, I think for us multiplicity was fundamentally a way of attempting to meet the demands of a wide variety of adults who had power over us in early childhood, and also a way of trying to *get our own needs met* -- often at each other's expense.
When I first knew myself as a person I did not have the word multiple to describe my experience, but I was aware that there were people inside watching me, just like there were people outside. I figured out pretty quickly that there were things you didn't talk about outside, and there were things you didn't talk about inside. There were times when what was happening at the front was open to seeing, and times when it was closed, like ... a curtain being pulled or a wall going up. Sometimes I am sure I lost time in that stereotypical way, but other times I just couldn't get to where the front space was, and that was fine, back then I didn't really care.
The idea of this happening for things that were traumatic is pretty standard, it is in all the clinical literature, but for us it was not just about trauma, it was also about territory. Just like our outside kids argue over who gets to play Elsa in Frozen, people would compete over who got the good parts of the time, the chance to buy candy at the convenience store and eat it in private or the chance to pick out a new book. Even when time had passed and the trauma was largely over, people still competed; in high school one girl wanted to be a sort of ordinary semi-popular teenager, and she fought tooth and nail with the person who was more of a weird theatre type, and neither of them were crazy about the geeky computer person or the spooky choir/creative writing girl. So that curtain would come down not just to keep trauma isolated, but so that people could get to live their own life, meeting their own needs, without having to compete or share with anyone else. Nobody wanted to risk someone else messing up their relationship, and nobody wanted to share with people who didn't 'deserve' it -- who hadn't 'done the work' to earn whatever the good thing was.
(Of course a lot of the time we didn't have this much control over things, stuff just happened, people ended up out, the curtain ended up down or not -- but as a system we were very heavily invested in the belief that we were controlling/choosing everything, including all the trauma, and so it was very natural to come up with a narrative about competing or not sharing, and over time those narratives became more true.)
It was not a very satisfying way to live and it went on that way a lot longer than was really necessary, and even after the curtain quit coming down -- things quit being private -- we still tended to compete intensely and divide up our lives and time in a very... ungenerous way. For us letting go of that and letting things be more free-flowing was a big positive change, and it is really the exact same change as not trying to meet the needs of everyone in our life by providing the Exactly Right Person.
I hope that makes some sense, it is a little challenging to figure out how to talk about without writing an epic essay. :-) I am still happy to answer questions here in the thread or privately through the mail. And it is an open offer, just in case someone finds this thread in a week and wonders. :-)
posted by brynplusplus at 1:04 PM on June 9, 2015 [10 favorites]
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posted by MartinWisse at 12:40 AM on June 8, 2015 [4 favorites]