Input re Multiple Personality Disorder

[SEVERUSMAX]

Sev, I did some papers on this topic. You are welcome to pm me if there is anything specific that you would like to know. Perhaps I would be able to help.

Thanks, Vana, SK, and rachlou. I appreciate that info. That bit about the controlling mother is especially clever.

 

[3113]

Sorry to contradict you, 3113, but it's not true. Dissociative personality CAN happen relating to a SINGLE event that happened in someone's life and have nothing to do with abuse in childhood

As Selena pointed out, I am not incorrect. At least not if we're going with a psychatric definition of DID. There's a lot of controversy about it, whether it's a real disorder, etc.

However, according to current psychatric definitions of it, a single event isn't enough to do it--though "The Three Faces of Eve" movie tried to say it could be that easy. The movie, made in the '50's, didn't dare tell the truth about the real woman who was badly and frequently abused in childhood.

To quote from one website on the subject:

The vast majority (as many as 98 to 99%) of individuals who develop Dissociative Disorders have documented histories of repetitive, overwhelming, and often life-threatening trauma at a sensitive developmental stage of childhood (usually before the age of nine), and they may possess an inherited biological predisposition for dissociation. In our culture the most frequent precursor to Dissociative Disorders is extreme physical, emotional, and sexual abuse in childhood, but survivors of other kinds of trauma in childhood (such as natural disasters, invasive medical procedures, war, kidnapping, and torture) have also reacted by developing Dissociative Disorders.

Check out my post below, however, for a link to those who question whether DID is a real disorder at all....

 

[3113]

I suggest you check this out:

MPD Controversy

What I found most interesting is the reference to Voodoo. There is the suggestion here that some people might normally (sic) be dissociative rather than it being purely related to childhood trauma and psychological disorders.

So, it CAN be dormant? Well, that would explain why his marriage hadn't collapsed sooner and he held down a job for so long.

From what I understand, there is a central personality--so to speak. They may be a fairly fragile personality, but the other personalities may sleep, coming out only infrequently. So the person can live, if not completely happily and normally, at least semi-normally for a while. They hold it together, as it were.

Here's a quote about this:

Some people with Dissociative Disorders can hold highly responsible jobs, contributing to society in a variety of professions, the arts, and public service -- appearing to function normally to coworkers, neighbors, and others with whom they interact daily.

Then something stressful happens, something that reminds them of past trauma, and the other personalities come out more frequently; they start taking over and suddenly the person can no longer deny that something's very wrong. They've lost whole hours or days of time, people tell them they did or said things they can't remember.

However, I'm not talking about Jim Carrey and Renee Zellweger here. These are just everyday people, one of whom is simultaneously 3 people.

Sev, just from a writer's p.o.v., yes, this may be about "everyday people"--but you're using it for the purpose of writing erotica. If you were using it for the purpose of telling the story of a DID, that would be different. But I think, from what you're saying, you're going to use it for the sexual situations, the sexiness of those situations. And that's just fine.

In my mind, however, this does not jell or go well with a story that involves a DID person who, as defined by psychatrists, had to have suffered horribly as a little kid. REAL stories about REAL D.I.D. people often do include the fact that one or more of their personas are sexually adventuous--but given this background, there's nothing sexy about it. It's scary and dark and tragic. (ex: a story of a stripper can be a great deal of sexy fun...but not if the stripper tells of how her father repeated raped her as a child and that's why she now strips).

Is that what you want? Before you do read something like "When Rabbit Howls"--a terrifying book--be aware of what you want this story to be. Because reading that book is going to kill any fun you might have with this idea if FUN is what you want from it.

I suspect that you would do better--and get the same thing (three different personalites) by following the controversy idea that such disassociation, as in voodoo might not be evidence of a fragmented idenity--or might not require such a history (severe childhood trauma). Perhaps PTSD would serve better as it could happen at an older age and be trauma of a different type.

Final note: when both "Three Faces of Eve" and then "Sybil" came out, the books/movies implied that DID people could be cured by merging the personalities. Both skimmed over two facts: (1) It takes a very long time to do this, (2) it's not always successful. DID people, after years of therapy and merging of personalites can splinter again into a whole new batch of them.

This disorder is a coping mechanism, a way of surviving. The longer the person has relied on it, the harder it will be for them to learn how to function differently.

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

Ok, first off there is the book the others have mentioned "When Rabbit Howls" as well as those influenced by it (Grant Morrisson has a great MPS character called Crazy Jane in his Doom Patrol books, which you can probably peruse in a decently sized or quality comic shop in the DC Vertigo section).

In it the subject has an event of abuse and the personalities arose as shielding mechanisms, first against the first offense and then against anything else that may come their way. In these accounts the character's personalities arose with need and it can shape with the personalities having passing knowledge of the others or intimate, some personalities may be shielded from all others. I dunno, these are the accounts.



Now for what I know better. Here's how it's worked for me. My personalities are distinct, with full knowledge of one another and coexisting in the same generic space. The entity known as myself is a chimera built of the personalities as a base and then as their mixtures, fluttering dominances, and channeling voices. Each has their main area of competence and easily discernible attitude. They each however have their own full-fledged personalities and thus attitudes to subjects can vary between personalities though the collective may side towards certain viewpoints at the expense of others. This is done so via battle and compromise.

Occasionally but rarely, an event can occur in which one personality can exhibit total dominance over the body. This has only occurred once for a noticable length of time and the feeling of singularity left my chimera feeling like a passenger. Most of the time, at least two personalities are "at the helm" even if one is greatly if not completely dominating (like during such actions as taking a test or researching something).

Overall, we/they have developed a stability of radically different if not opposite forces pushing and cooperating like a centrifuge with great weights and long radii. It rattles around but no one really wants it to fall over cause then we are all in trouble.

This is of course a less interesting form of it. While they can assert themselves strongly, others can inhibit with effort the strong feelings of one (if they care) and total control is a rare though terrifying action. All personalities are aware of every action, so it is not the typical "wow, what just happened" thing. This doesn't mean that it doesn't take concentration and effort and that I'm not at all afraid of the potential, just that it doesn't work like that.

If you were planning on using that, the desires would be strong desires, rising dominances and committee battles in his head and his other desires not caring enough to stop it.



Given that, you're probably better off with the Crazy Jane model. I just wanted to give you some information on how it has exhibited itself to me.

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

Oh, one add. In my case it wasn't born out of any real trauma. I wasn't abused and while one was indeed created out of unhappy cicumstances, for the most part I think the others just came. Perhaps out of imagination, perhaps out of being fundamentally different, perhaps out of something that isn't traceable to anything, perhaps because of the unique properties of one of the residents. Whatever the case may be, trauma is NOT the only route to MPS.

 

[Equinoxe]

I assume we are ignoring the controversy over whether or not MPD/DID even exists solely because it doesn't help in writing a story in which it clearly does, and not for other reasons?

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

I assume we are ignoring the controversy over whether or not MPD/DID even exists solely because it doesn't help in writing a story in which it clearly does, and not for other reasons?

But...I already know that it exists.

Mean people always trying to make me not exist. Ooh it makes me communistic with tangerine-like possibilites.

...

Or not.

...

I'll shut up now.

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

Seriously though, if we are talking about the existing of multiple fully-defined semi-autnomous individual personalities in one sentient mostly-human-being then I can quite clearly attest it exists.

If one is talking about the repression of traumatic memories and the trauma of that fracturing one's personality or said permutations, you'll have to ask the memoirist of When Rabbit Howls. I can't attest or deny it's accuracy. I only know that my case has nothing to do with it.

In truth I think psychology gets too much of a bug in its ass about trying to attest to knowing more than they do. The brain is exceedingly complex and our knowledge of it compares to our knowledge of intercellular reactions in the first days of the light microscope (the infamous visual proof of the homunculi in sperm that carried all the information of a full grown child). What routes lead to these "diseases"? Are they diseases if the "victim" can cope and turn it to their advantage? And what does it all mean? Is there just one route or a variety of routes? Is there even a reliable standard on which we can base everyone or is everyone just a little crazy in their own way?

Who knows?

 

[SEVERUSMAX]

I suggest you check this out:

MPD Controversy

What I found most interesting is the reference to Voodoo. There is the suggestion here that some people might normally (sic) be dissociative rather than it being purely related to childhood trauma and psychological disorders.

From what I understand, there is a central personality--so to speak. They may be a fairly fragile personality, but the other personalities may sleep, coming out only infrequently. So the person can live, if not completely happily and normally, at least semi-normally for a while. They hold it together, as it were.

Here's a quote about this:

Then something stressful happens, something that reminds them of past trauma, and the other personalities come out more frequently; they start taking over and suddenly the person can no longer deny that something's very wrong. They've lost whole hours or days of time, people tell them they did or said things they can't remember.


Sev, just from a writer's p.o.v., yes, this may be about "everyday people"--but you're using it for the purpose of writing erotica. If you were using it for the purpose of telling the story of a DID, that would be different. But I think, from what you're saying, you're going to use it for the sexual situations, the sexiness of those situations. And that's just fine.

In my mind, however, this does not jell or go well with a story that involves a DID person who, as defined by psychatrists, had to have suffered horribly as a little kid. REAL stories about REAL D.I.D. people often do include the fact that one or more of their personas are sexually adventuous--but given this background, there's nothing sexy about it. It's scary and dark and tragic. (ex: a story of a stripper can be a great deal of sexy fun...but not if the stripper tells of how her father repeated raped her as a child and that's why she now strips).

Is that what you want? Before you do read something like "When Rabbit Howls"--a terrifying book--be aware of what you want this story to be. Because reading that book is going to kill any fun you might have with this idea if FUN is what you want from it.

I suspect that you would do better--and get the same thing (three different personalites) by following the controversy idea that such disassociation, as in voodoo might not be evidence of a fragmented idenity--or might not require such a history (severe childhood trauma). Perhaps PTSD would serve better as it could happen at an older age and be trauma of a different type.

Final note: when both "Three Faces of Eve" and then "Sybil" came out, the books/movies implied that DID people could be cured by merging the personalities. Both skimmed over two facts: (1) It takes a very long time to do this, (2) it's not always successful. DID people, after years of therapy and merging of personalites can splinter again into a whole new batch of them.

This disorder is a coping mechanism, a way of surviving. The longer the person has relied on it, the harder it will be for them to learn how to function differently.

It's meant as a mixture of intellectual exercise and erotica, yes. So, there are two different disorders, then? Interesting, given which one might work better with the plot. Thanks for the feedback again.

 

[SEVERUSMAX]

Oh, one add. In my case it wasn't born out of any real trauma. I wasn't abused and while one was indeed created out of unhappy cicumstances, for the most part I think the others just came. Perhaps out of imagination, perhaps out of being fundamentally different, perhaps out of something that isn't traceable to anything, perhaps because of the unique properties of one of the residents. Whatever the case may be, trauma is NOT the only route to MPS.

Very startling and informative comments, Luc. Thanks. I had no idea that you suffered from this condition.

 

[3113]

It's meant as a mixture of intellectual exercise and erotica, yes. So, there are two different disorders, then? Interesting, given which one might work better with the plot. Thanks for the feedback again.

Well, actually, as you can see from Luc's posts...there are a lot of different varients of the disorder.

As Luc pointed out, the cognative science community likes to have things neatly categorized. So they'll say, this is DID and this is what causes it. Rather like they use to say that Gay Men could be traced to dominating mothers

Disassociation can happen quite naturally and for a variety of reasons. PTSD is a form of disassociation. We might say that some method actors are disassociative. And then there are those people who go into trances and channel other selves--including "gods" as in Voodoo.

This may well be a common feature of the human brain--or it may be a feature that is more or less likely given certain brains.

Not all children faced with severe traumas in childhood end up with DID, nor do all DID's (Luc for example) experience the same sort of trauma or childhood hardship (read that as circumstances where this works as a good survival mechanism).

The thing is, DID was, arguably, a "fad" in mental disorders for a while. And Luc, if he'd been to a shink at the height of this fad (probably the 70's Sybil case), would have probably been told that yes, he had some childhood trauma he couldn't remember. His shink would have insisted on it, because there's no DID without it.

Not to be too cynical or hard on therapists, because I do believe therapy can help, but there are a lot of shrinks out there who, as in the questionable Sybil case, would rather impose a dignosis and history on a patient than actually find out a far more prosaic truth.

Which is all to say, it's very difficult to say exactly what is DID--the extent of it and perimeters--exactly who has it and why, and what is typical for those who have it (like Luc, all personalities are aware, or, as in "Rabbit," there is memory loss). And the reason that it's so hard to give you better limits on it is because a lot of psychatrists jumped on the DID bandwagon a little too fast and made quick and dirty assumptions based on a few famous cases.

Just my not-so-humble opinion there