How I learned to live with multiple personalities(bbc.com)
bbc.com
How I learned to live with multiple personalities
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170613-how-i-learned-to-live-with-multiple-personalities
4 comments
I mean, given their logic I think the Mister Rogers example would work too. The idea is having a consistent presence, I believe.
If you suffer abuse as a child from your parent, you still have a consistent presence in that parent. The idea the article was suggesting was that you need to have an actual relationship with someone.
People may believe they have a real relationship with God though. People believe God speaks to them and helps guide them to make decisions. Also, would not God share the memories of every living person, being omnipotent and all?
Perhaps believing it is a real relationship is enough.
Perhaps believing it is a real relationship is enough.
There is a really fun fictional novel called Put This House in Order by M. Ruff, it's sort of a road trip story featuring two people with DID. The science of the story is a bit iffy (one of the characters has mastered a sort of internal visualization where his personalities can interact), but from the sound of this article he pretty much nailed the what-it's-like factor (particularly w/r/t the broken development chains of the various personalities).
I thought this sort of thing had been debunked?
From the article:
"And in the UK, at least, DID is a controversial diagnosis. It is listed in both of the main psychiatric manuals used around the world (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, produced by the American Psychiatric Association, and the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, produced by the World Health Organization). But in practice, says Aquarone, there can still be reluctance among psychiatrists to accept it. DID is now thought to affect perhaps 1% of people (about the same rate as schizophrenia), yet there have been claims from sceptics that perhaps patients are simply acting out different identities, and that a proneness to fantasy explains the entire disorder.
"Brain imaging work supports the idea that people with DID are not acting, and there is other research refuting such claims. In 2016, for example, a team at King’s College London published a study of 65 women, including some diagnosed with DID. They concluded that the women with DID were no more fantasy-prone, suggestible or likely to generate false memories than those without a diagnosis. According to the authors, this result challenges the core hypothesis of the ‘fantasy model’.
"Melanie is now a director of First Person Plural, a dissociative identity disorders association, and she frequently talks to psychologists, psychiatrists, GPs and care workers, spreading the word that DID is real. She and Aquarone recently helped to organise the first conference on services for people with trauma-related dissociation – it brought together clinicians from the NHS and the private and voluntary sectors. One of the big challenges, they note, is that it can take many months of therapy with a specialist in dissociative disorders to help a patient, but this is generally only available privately."
"And in the UK, at least, DID is a controversial diagnosis. It is listed in both of the main psychiatric manuals used around the world (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, produced by the American Psychiatric Association, and the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, produced by the World Health Organization). But in practice, says Aquarone, there can still be reluctance among psychiatrists to accept it. DID is now thought to affect perhaps 1% of people (about the same rate as schizophrenia), yet there have been claims from sceptics that perhaps patients are simply acting out different identities, and that a proneness to fantasy explains the entire disorder.
"Brain imaging work supports the idea that people with DID are not acting, and there is other research refuting such claims. In 2016, for example, a team at King’s College London published a study of 65 women, including some diagnosed with DID. They concluded that the women with DID were no more fantasy-prone, suggestible or likely to generate false memories than those without a diagnosis. According to the authors, this result challenges the core hypothesis of the ‘fantasy model’.
"Melanie is now a director of First Person Plural, a dissociative identity disorders association, and she frequently talks to psychologists, psychiatrists, GPs and care workers, spreading the word that DID is real. She and Aquarone recently helped to organise the first conference on services for people with trauma-related dissociation – it brought together clinicians from the NHS and the private and voluntary sectors. One of the big challenges, they note, is that it can take many months of therapy with a specialist in dissociative disorders to help a patient, but this is generally only available privately."
I asked a friend who said that in the decades he has practiced psychiatry not only did he never have a patient with this diagnosis, but he also never met a colleague who did, so his personal opinion is that this is more of something meant for Hollywood scripts or attention grabbing articles than something that actually exists in the way it is portrayed.
How can it be debunked? It's all internal to a person. I'm not comfortable telling people what they feel/who they are is wrong.
I know multiple "collectives", as I've heard them called, on some online chatrooms. They seem perfectly functional and logically consistent.
I know multiple "collectives", as I've heard them called, on some online chatrooms. They seem perfectly functional and logically consistent.
>How can it be debunked? It's all internal to a person. I'm not comfortable telling people what they feel/who they are is wrong.
Yes, but there's this thing called science, that doesn't care about hurting feelings...
Yes, but there's this thing called science, that doesn't care about hurting feelings...
I think parent comment was referring to "Sybil" or something similar (it isn't the only story about DID like this), which was based on a real person, except there's indication her psychiatrist was tricking her into thinking she had multiple personalities and then helping resolve those personalities in order to make money off the story. Pretty much everything about the case is unclear at this point, other than that shady biz was going on everywhere once people realized there was big money to be made.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_(Schreiber_book)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_(Schreiber_book)
By "debunked", the parent meant, "there is little clinical evidence for existence."
The burden of proof for the diagnosis is on the assertion; people can act as though they have multiple personalities, and that's why there is controversy on the disease itself.
The burden of proof for the diagnosis is on the assertion; people can act as though they have multiple personalities, and that's why there is controversy on the disease itself.
I mean, at least in a social (not clinical) setting, i'd say the burden of proof is on society to prove that it doesn't exist.
I understand not wanting to clinically treat it if there isn't much evidence.
I understand not wanting to clinically treat it if there isn't much evidence.
Not really. You don't prove non-existence -- you prove existence.
Else we'd also have some burden to prove that fairies don't exist.
Else we'd also have some burden to prove that fairies don't exist.
Fascinating piece.
> One psychological benefit of religious belief may be that, in theory, a relationship with God, with all its associated memories, can extend from early childhood through to death, and no matter where you are on the planet, it is there. As Aquarone says, “You can’t take it away – and it transcends where you are.”
Besides not even attempting to provide evidence that religious people were less likely to develop DID, it also just doesn't make sense. People talk about having a "relationship" with God, but it's not a real relationship. The article says having a relationship with a parent helps avoid DID because the parent helps you learn how to manage yourself, but God certainly isn't doing this. Similarly it talks about how being with people with whom you have plenty of shared memories can enhance the sense of an ongoing self persisting through the years, but you don't have any shared memories with God. This paragraph would make just as much (or rather, little) sense if you claimed to have a "relationship" with Mister Rogers, because you watched Mister Rogers' Neighborhood for decades.