Talk:Dissociative identity disorder/Archive 1

Archive 2004
"Modern study has shown that this abuse is often a combination of real and imagined. Many people with classical MPD have early-life (prior to age 7) hallucinations, which resolve later in life."

... the hell? What's the source for the "hallucinations" idea? Agreed that many so-called "trauma memories" -- particularly those evoked by hypnosis -- are not entirely real but conflations of actual memories with horror films, books or other forgotten childhood input, what makes such an experience a "hallucination"? --Bluejay Young 22:39, Nov 29, 2004 (UTC)

"Further, classical MPD happens frequently in those with autism, often without the history of abuse. The implications of this are currently not fully understood."

I'd like some evidence for the above. Some autistics such as Donna Williams report developing a form of non-MPD, non-DID multiplicity (the various selves communicate and cooperate) in order to sort out and deal with confusing sensory input. A growing online group of persons claiming to have Asperger autism also identify as multiple; there are discussions and articles about this at Graphic Truth among others. Quite frequently, neither the autism nor the multiplicity have been medically diagnosed, and these people are self-identifying with the above conditions.

Obviously both autism and multiplicity are very personal experiences. I have no problem with people self-identifying as either autistic or multiple, and I have no doubt that some autistics really are multiple. However, frequently is another matter and one that I'd like some documentation for. I have therefore removed it from the page. - Bluejay

--- Graphictruth is my site, but it's primary focus at the moment is political. In this context, it should be referenced from here to one of several more directly useful pages: The Internal Landscape Inside The Bone Box Reports from the Autistic Spectrum - further contributions to the latter two areas are welcome.

Or if interested, people can source or contribute to our Wetware for Dummies Topic.

My writing is unapologetically centered on my own experiences and written in a casual tone, so it's not apt to simply splice it in, but it could add useful perspective in creating a neutral overview.

--Firewheel 19:52, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Someone contributed this piece of nastiness, which I have moved here and present without any other comment. -- Anon.

---

DID is another term for what is more commonly known as "multiple personality disorder", or MPD.

It is a disorder of the mind found (in the main) in overeducated female attention-seekers and perpetuated by a combination of highly paid counsellors and psychiatrists and a free market economy.

Although alledgedly caused by trauma in childhood diagnosis is by far most prevalent in the United States, a country normally considered relatively civilised by global standards. It appears to be entirely absent in Africa, despite the far greater traumas regularly suffered by children on that continent. This is likely to be as much to do with the absence of psychiatrists to provide diagnoses as it has to do with the absence of sufferers.

It alledgedly presents as completely separate, distinct personalities within a single body. Claims for these "fragments", or "alters" include different blood pressures, electroencephalographic readings, eyeglass prescriptions and other external physiological characteristics. "Alters" typically represent a range of ages, sexes, accents, ethnic origins and in extreme cases, species (i.e. non-humans).

DID "survivors" sometimes "remember" that the abuse which led to their state was ritual in nature, sometimes organised, sometimes Satanic, but almost invariably extremely severe. Since the diagnosis is only made twenty or more years after the abuse alledgedly occurred, it is usually impossible to corroborate.

DID is the stereotypical "split personality" as depicted in the movie "Sybil". A more theatrical version is depicted in "Raising Cain".

DID is NOT schizophrenia, which has well-understood causes and can be controlled by drugs. DID is not treatable by drugs.


 * Well put... Though schizophrenia can't just be treated by drugs, it can be cured by LSD, actually...  Drug companies lobbied to have it declared a schedule I drug due to their fear that a cure would ruin their business, which was completely based on the ability to repeatedly sell high-priced treatments.  Another example of finance destroying the legitamacy of a technological field...  Khranus


 * The schizophrenia story is true; I believe the studies were done at Johns Hopkins but I'll have to look it up. LSD was also found extremely useful in curing alcoholism. So of course they banned it. This is also the background behind why ecstasy was dislegalized. --Bluejay Young 22:39, Nov 29, 2004 (UTC)

Aurora
From my talk page.

"adding "arguably" does not make something NPOV)" Of course it does. I wasn't stating what I wrote as a fact. Nevertheless, Aurora IS the most realistic fictional character who has multiple personality disorder listed on that page. The last paragraph clearly does not apply to her. Take it from someone who's actually familiar with the character and the comic book: the average reader of the comic wouldn't even know that Aurora has DID, since it's barely ever even touched upon. It's NOT used to make the stories more bizarre and the disease is NOT used in a stereotypical way. It's simply a part of the character...much in the same way as her brother is a super hero who just so happens to be gay. No big deal. Just part of the character's backround. As someone who's never even read the comics, how could you know this? As far as I'm aware, there has NEVER been an Alpha Flight story where the plot revolves around her disease doing something ridiculous, like has happened in all the other mentioned media. Whenever her disease is focussed on, it's done so in a very realistic, human type way, just like how her brother's sexuality is dealt with. So, WHAT was biased about what I wrote? What you wrote is biased because it contains outright lies. Lumping the character of Aurora in with characters and plotlines that use the disease to create something ridiculous and implausible is total misinformation. I.E., it's a lie.


 * Aside from the fact that this is a superhero comic and the word "realism" isn't exactly very applicable in this context, you are overlooking one of the main problems with DID in fiction, which is the controversy whether DID is therapy-induced. Has there ever been any hint to this in the comic strip?--Eloquence* 12:13, May 30, 2004 (UTC)

I can't comment on whether the comic BOOK (it's been on-going since 1983; it's not some stupid little weekly strip in the Sunday newspaper) has ever gone into details about how and why Aurora has DID. All that's know is that she has it, and this is what makes its use so realistic. That not everything is known or can be answered and that the single DID aspect of her character is hardly what defines her as a character. Like I said above, the DID is just one teeny little part of the overall charatcer. So, unlike the other cited fictional works, the disease is not used in some kind of shock-value kind of way, just to get a story out of it. Marvel has dealt with other "taboo" issues in their stories, such as alcoholism, child abuse, suicide, racism, homosexuality, and AIDS. Mental disease is hardly the only way that they try to make their stories as realistic as possible. Are there times when Marvel has used stereotypical LOONEY types as villans? Of course. But Aurora is most definitely not some stereotypical usage of a condition to make a story good. Why you think my use of "arguably" indicates bias is anyone's guess. In the meantime, it's ridiculous for you to keep removing the relevant information.


 * I didn't remove information, I removed your judgment calls about it. If you can cite an expert on DID who sees Aurora as the best treatment of DID in fiction to date, please do it. In the meantime I have phrased the paragraph in a way that does not judge it specifically and leaves open the option that is more realistic than other depictions.--Eloquence* 02:43, Jun 5, 2004 (UTC)

Remarks on major revision
I became aware, through outside sources, that Peter Barach of the ISSD had visited the Wikipedia DID article and "fixed" it. I decided to look and was taken aback by the sheer amount of psychological verbiage in the article, and the total excision of any critical points of view.

Given that DID is a controversial diagnosis, allowing the article to be captured by one viewpoint did not seem like a good idea.

After several failed attempts at providing a unified presentation, I gave up and decided just to present what seemed to me to be the four basic positions involved.

For the ISSD position, I used what was already there, as I did for much of the "healthy multiplicity" position. I would hope that proponents of those views would regard these as fair presentations.

The true believer version is probably NOT fair to them and will probably require some work. I just could not put myself into the mindset required to believe in satanic cults.

The skeptical section is an attempt to play fair by my OWN position, not giving it undue prominence, not ranting and raving. Whether or not I've succeeded is for others to judge.

The conversation heretofore seems to have been dominated by the ISSD and healthy multiplicity positions. If anyone holding those positions is tempted to just wipe my version and restore the old one, I beg you to let some critical material remain.

If anyone feels that there's a position that has NOT been described, and should be, please add it.

Zora 15:21, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)

First of all I wonder if you have something personal against this Peter Barach character or his organisation. I note that you have moved a number of things around and made a section marked as the opinion of an ISSD member, the significant problem is you included a paragraph (on why MPD is now called DID) from the clearly marked section "the theory of DID", that was of my own authorship. It does not represent an ISSD opinion whatever that might be. I think that your assessment as to the origin of the stuff you edited has coloured your treatment of it. What you thought was one article, was in fact more than one contribution. What you actually did was delete my entire contribution of 3 hours work, in little under 12 hours after I had posted it. You left one paragraph.

I am sure that wikipedia is not just about stating positions, I am sure that there is some desire for it to include a knowledge base of useful information.

The reason that no critical points of view were contained in my contribution is that I dont know any. I only know what I know from front line experience. That was part of the reason for posting it, that others qualified to comment might critique it and add to it. I was not expecting it to be deleted it altogether.

I am an engineer by training, entirely independent and have been using wikis since ward cunningham's original. In the spirit of wiki's I did my very best to add useful information to the flesh out the existing section "DID theory" based upon my own personal observations and research. I spent several hours distilling as much as I could into a relatively small summary of the the theory of how DID works in practice. I tried to make a logical presentation of what is a very complex situation. I think that my contribution is one of the most succint and complete in the public domain, and could be a valuable one. I think that my work and the time and effort spent contributing to the page deserves a little more respect.

I put forward that beleivers in DID can positively contribute to a section on how DID works in theory, non-beleivers can not, all they can do is to simply say, we dont beleive in this theory. Non-beleivers by definition are unable to contribute factual data to something that they do not beleive exists and cannot positively contribute to that discussion. I think the wholesale deletion of the whole topic section was somewhat rude, and represents the ulimate in bias, that is removing the creative space that was there for mechanisms to be discussed. The whole section "DID in theory" has now disappeared!

I cant be bothered to restore it if ALL of 3 hours work is going to be squashed in less than 12 hours. Sure I dont mind a litte edit here and there and perhaps a major revamp every few months or so. Surely a bit of data collection on a topic is needed before a refactoring or any wholsale deletions are made. I dont think this is healthy wiki practice.

DID can be caused by experiences that DO NOT involve satanic cults. For example if a young child is set on fire. There are accounts of mild dissociation due to far less traumatic incidents.

The idea that therapists create DID is easy to disprove. I know of several people who show the symptoms of DID including multiple presenting parts. None of these people have have had therapy from any therapist that is aware of DID.

The fact that the true beleivers section of this page is only one paragraph long, does seem to demonstrate measurable bias in the authorship of this page, especially since no attempt to salvage my contribution into that heading was made.

User:Carabas 01.04, 19 Aug 2004 (GMT)

Carabas,

If you feel that the "true believers" section is slighted, you are free to expand it. As I said, I was finding it hard to be fair and need help.

I'm sorry that I mistook your addition for Peter Barach's; clearly, my eye for style is not as good as I thought it was! I'll have to pull up the ISSD page and make sure that everything stated as an ISSD position is in fact so. You should delete your para if it's misquoted. Any other "yes the diagnosis is real" positions that exist, if not covered, could be added.

But I must say that I do have some qualms about restoring anything called Theory of DID if it is NOT a survey of various professional and scientific opinions on the subject. Believing that you suffer from DID and having your own ideas about what it is and how it works is not the same thing as being published and speaking at international conferences!

Nor is it quite the same thing as saying "I have DID and this is how I feel about it and it's a feeling shared by many others with DID" -- which is relevant sociological information, if not a scientific theory. That's there in the "healthy multiplicity" section, which represents less a trend in professional thinking than it does a conviction held by many multiples.

If you wanted to revise your contribution as a HISTORY of the various explanations of DID offered by various authors and put it under "history of DID theories" or some such title, we could then link that to the main page. Putting it ON the main page might make the page much too long and unwieldy, which it almost is even after my revision. I'm also thinking that it might be a good idea to spin off the section on DID in books/movies/comics, etc. There's a lot of material there, packed very tightly. It could spread out on its own page.

I don't believe that all DID is caused by therapists. Nor do I think that you have to believe in satanic abuse to think that DID is a useful diagnosis. I think I'm representative of MOST of the skeptics in that regard. That suggests that the skeptical section needs some work too. I was so busy tying one hand behind my back I wasn't looking at what the other one was doing :) I will try to rephrase.

I hope that by criticizing each other we can make the article stronger and more inclusive of all viewpoints. Please hang in there.

Zora 03:58, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I am a full time carer for someone now in the final stages of recovery from DID... that makes me a beleiver.

User:Carabas

Carabas, I also have personal experience with someone with DID. It led me to another conclusion.

I'm not saying that your patient isn't suffering. IMHO, it's a matter of cultural expectations shaping how the victim feels and thinks of the suffering. My own experience -- and I think that of many others -- was that this particular diagnosis doesn't seem to help relieve the suffering.

But if we disagree on this, that's OK. If we keep the arguments organized in separate sections, we can give each its due.

Zora 10:04, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the encouragement to hang in there, I have relaxed a bit now. I am pleased to report that looking at your viewpoints I realised that I myself did not fall into them! As a result I have another well recognised view point to add.

I started adding it but my browser crashed... here is the standpoint of Theophostic Prayer Ministry I will try and work it into the main page this week sometime. I am not sure about the copyright issues about quoting this paragraph from their guidelines document. I was thinking of entitling this viewpoint as "Beleivers in the patients reality". If you hold this viewpoint you can beleive yet maintain a heathy skepticism.


 * THE POSITION OF THEOPHOSTIC PRAYER MINISTRY is that we only know what we really know. We live our lives within tangible truth but minister in the victims reported reality.  We do not bring judgment on what someone reports but rather seek to minister to the person where they are.  We do not suggest or insinuate anything about what we may believe is true about the person receiving ministry.  We offer care and ministry to people who report the unthinkable and leave the debate of the validity of what they report with others outside the context of ministry.

User:Carabas

I originally posted these two quotes, so I'll try to present information with them.

"Modern study has shown that this abuse is often a combination of real and imagined. Many people with classical MPD have early-life (prior to age 7) hallucinations, which resolve later in life."

''... the hell? What's the source for the "hallucinations" idea? Agreed that many so-called "trauma memories" -- particularly those evoked by hypnosis -- are not entirely real but conflations of actual memories with horror films, books or other forgotten childhood input, what makes such an experience a "hallucination"?''

Actually, it doesn't make such experiences hallucinations at all. I'm referring instead to actual visual (or audio) overlay events. They're obviously not what's really there (there's no delusion that the events were real, or the like). They tend to be brief things like loud noises (often many voices babbling together) or visuals of things like landslides or the like. They only last a few seconds. As for my sources, well... it came up in a discussion once with a psych, so I'm not really sure, other than to say I've personally experienced it.

Childhood hallucination is also not, generally speaking, a mental illness. Many children experience things that aren't quite real. It's only adulthood hallucination that's an issue.

(odd, I could have sworn there was an extra line or two in my original post of that type)

"Further, classical MPD happens frequently in those with autism, often without the history of abuse. The implications of this are currently not fully understood."

I'm mostly speaking from experience with this one. I'm both. There's a large section of the autistic community that expresses plurality. The prevailing theory among us is that it's because of the narrow focus of the autistic brain, focusing on our entire personality at once is a nontrivial task. As an adaptation, we often naturally develop plurality. Loss of identity is another common problem.

While this is mostly anecdotal, it's anecdotal over a rather large group of people (I would estimate close to 10% of the autistic people I know express some plurality of one form or another). While some of us were abused, most of us weren't. I wasn't.  My inners all work together very effectively as a unit, and our life is as ordinary as can be expected for someone with high-function autism.

"As for my sources, well... it came up in a discussion once with a psych, so I'm not really sure, other than to say I've personally experienced it."

That's fine, but that doesn't mean many children do. I've never seen a peer-reviewed study on childhood hallucination of the type you describe. Would you like to direct me to one? More to the point, if you want to restore this to the article, be sure to cite it as your source. - Bluejay

>>> Google around, there are a few references. It's not important though.

"I'm mostly speaking from experience with this one. I'm both.  There's a large section of the autistic community that expresses plurality."

I am part of that community. You said classical MPD, which I have not observed to be something associated with autism to the same degree that non-MPD, non-pathological multiplicity is. Most of the autistic multiples I know, myself included, have operating and communication systems that allow us to function in the world-at-large, same as you describe above. Like you, I didn't split through abuse but was born this way as was my partner. In our case, the operating / communications system seems to have come as part of the package. I think if you dropped the "classical MPD" part I'd more than accept it. - Bluejay

>>> The "Classical MPD" was taken radically out of context. I had posted a description of the archetypes associated with the "classical MPD" and contrasted it with late-life DID. It can certainly be dropped from the statement, especially with the context removed.

I also take your and Zora's points about true believers vs. unbelievers when it comes to Western (particularly American) views multiplicity and recent events. The difficulty with any discussion of multiplicity is that personality is itself largely a cultural and social construct, but a lot of people aren't willing to believe this and get the idea that "personality" is a biological entity like the immune system or something. (Brain-mind researchers laugh at this, but onward.) Some non-western cultures accept multiplicity. The paragraph that cited non-western views and related concepts was meant as a way of illustrating the complexity of any discussion of multiplicity as pathology. This subject is far more complex than the recent overdiagnosis/scandal/lawsuit furor, or a theoretical division between believers and unbelievers. There ought to be some more history about multiplicity in there, things like William James' ideas or a few words about Mary Reynolds. - Bluejay

>>> Plurality is a spectrum, people can fall many places along it. Some are shattered by life. Some are born that way. Some merely identify with it. Each has a place, and each happens. At least, that's what I've seen.

"Believing that you suffer from DID and having your own ideas about what it is and how it works is not the same thing as being published and speaking at international conferences!"

Prestige lends credence to what the guy says? --Bluejay Young 17:34, Aug 21, 2004 (UTC)

I've taken a stab at rewriting the opening paragraph based on a radio show I heard called "A House with Many Rooms" that aired Sept 9, 2004 on CBC Radio's "Outfront". The thing that struck me about the radio show was how differently the media portray MPD than how this woman explained her story. Her story was sad, simple, and understandable all at once. And to be honest, compared to the popular image of MPD, it was relatively boring. (That's ok--one person's boring is another's exciting. But it's definately not sensationalist.)

As it seemed so straight-forward a story, I think it would make a good concrete opening example of a *real* MPD case. In particular, I wanted to emphasize that her current treatment is not aimed at "curing her" of MPD, but dealing with the more fundemental problem: the trauma from the childhood abuse. I guess what I'm suggesting is in this case, MPD was the symptom, not the disease or problem itself. (Just as different people with depression express different symptoms--even though they have the same root problem.)

I guess the other aim of the opening paragraph is to get people to re-evaluate everything they know about MPD.. clear the sleight for some new ideas.

Anyways, that's my two cents.. I hope that helps. (Meanwhile, I'm trying to find out if they're going to make the espisode I mentioned available over the Internet.)

Cheers,

geoff_o

Multiplicity in different cultures?
I'll try to write a NPOV version, with large chunks of the older material. The problem with the older material is that it was deployed in a way to say, "See there, it IS real".

I'm not going to resist any treatment that shows the "personality" as a construct, myself. I'm a Buddhist. In the context of Indian philosophy, Buddhism is the non-atman position -- challenging the reality of the self that we so often try to protect.

But then I don't want to go too far the OTHER way, in presenting my viewpoint as the truth ...

Zora 21:05, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Anecdotal evidence and personal beliefs
As I understand it, the usual way that Wikipedia does NPOV on extremely controversial topics is by saying, "Well, there's this POV and that POV, and that POV ... " and trying to be as exact as possible in presenting the different viewpoints.

However, this can't extend to giving a precis of the views of J. Random Contributor if J. Random is highly atypical. That's really not encyclopedia material, is it?

Suppose we're writing an article about flat-earth theories. We can say:

People used to believe that the earth was flat, but now most people believe that it's round. The Flat-Earth Society continues to insist that it's flat, and say that ..... blah blah blah.

OK, a society is encyclopedia-worthy. But suppose we added to the article:

Mr. Theophrastus Such of Omaha, Nebraska, believes that the earth is shaped like a carrot. Ms. Mohini Dutt of Mumbai believes that the earth is shaped like a rolling pin.

Perhaps you'll agree that adding offbeat and idiosyncratic POVs doesn't really add anything to an article. That's more like personal website material isn't it? If you can convince enough people, then you get to be in the encyclopedia.

So I've been trying to leave out my personal views, and I hope that anyone else here who feels "left out" can understand why this might be necessary.

Oi, I'm avoiding re-writing. I'll throw myself at it again later today.

Zora 21:24, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Of course, I see what you're saying. In my many rewrites to this page I made a mistake in biasing it somewhat toward my point of view (e.g., assuming that multiplicity is real, that the persons in a group are persons, and structuring my sentences that way). My partner's contributions were similar. That is the experience of ourselves and most of our online contacts, but for Wikipedia it is not NPOV enough. It would be like an article about God which assumes from the outset that there is a God.

However, I'd hardly define the healthy-multiple position as offbeat or idiosyncratic. We're no longer the lone voice in the wilderness asserting that multiplicity need not be pathological and that plurals can live normal lives. It's a view that needs to be taken into consideration along with "all multiplicity is a disorder" and "all multiplicity is a therapeutic hoax". People who come to Wikipedia wanting to learn about multiplicity need to know that the idea of independent, nonpathological multiplicity exists. I believe it is possible to write up healthy multiplicity in an NPOV fashion. --Bluejay Young 22:39, Aug 21, 2004 (UTC)

Theophostic

 * Perhaps you'll agree that adding offbeat and idiosyncratic POVs doesn't really add anything to an article. That's more like personal website material isn't it? If you can convince enough people, then you get to be in the encyclopedia.

This comment made above leads me to say that on the subject of DID, the theophostic prayer ministry POV has enough people convinced that it is probably worth documenting. The personal website in question is http://www.theophostic.com They produce basic and advanced training courses. They estimate that perhaps 30,000 people have done the basic course worldwide. The information about DID is in the second level advanced training (I dont know how many have done this course, but I have several hundred email addresses of those who have) and is held in a set of copyright materials that are only available on licence (for hire) namely the advanced training course videos. The total volume of information is around 16 videos and 3 books, of which approximately 1/3 teaches about DID.

Everyone who does the training gets to start with the same foundational teaching. The reason for their hire policy is that they recognise that DID etc is a moving target and so they wish to retain some control inorder to be able to provide updates and the most current information to practicioners.

I think that this information is very useful and encyclopedia worthy, what I dont know is how to sensitively bring it into the public domain if that is appropriate. It may be best simply to document the fact that this POV exists and leave readers to investigate for themselves from there.

I think it is also worth pointing out that the theophostic camp generally beleives dissociation to be a relatively common phenomenon on a sliding scale, mild to extreme.

Another website rich in informed articles from the theophostc viewpoint is http://www.kclehman.com There are a couple of articles on DID that are of interest specifically an article from Dr. Karl Lehman who descibes his own discovery of his own dissociation. I recommend these articles to you in the hope that you will see that this camp is offering a reasonable, pragmatic and academically conherent viewpoint worthy of documentation.


 * http://www.kclehman.com/docs/dissoced.pdf
 * http://www.kclehman.com/docs/Dissociation%20Case%20Study.pdf


 * Carabas 23:57, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)


 * Why don't you make an article about this prayer ministry, and mention that they work with multiples? --Bluejay Young 22:39, Nov 29, 2004 (UTC)

Good idea, nurturing is very demanding I have little time... but I may be able to... any suggestions as to where I should put such an article. Carabas

I think we're getting somewhere
Folks,

I just put up two hours worth of work on the article. It is FAR from being completely redone, but I think the true believer and skeptic sections are better. I have yet to tackle the mainstream and healthy multiplicity sections.

I should perhaps add that I don't see believers in healthy multiplicity as necessarily nutso. I've looked at enough websites and online discussions where the concept is presented that I know it's widespread. I'm not sure that I would agree with everyone in that camp, but as long as someone is functioning, what they believe about themselves is fine by me. My particular trigger, if I can use that loaded word, is someone who says I'm a baby now and I DEMAND special treatment.

I certainly don't have any plans to delete the healthy multiplicity section.

As for the prayer ministry material, I haven't looked at it yet, but I will.

Zora 01:20, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Zora I can understand your trigger entirely, been there done that! One problem is that the care "system" is so clinical and unable to provide genuine nurturing relationships needed. If you got yourself into that nurturing role, like I have, then it is genuinely really difficult to handle and the level of commitment needed is out of this world (and no one else around you will understand this). For myself I could not do it without having a road map and being able to see steady positive progress and measurable healing it is far too emotionally demanding not to have light at the end of the tunnel and some clear guidance towards that light. Even when things are going perfectly the healing process may take 3 or more years. With regards to your demanding child, imagine that you are a mother with a 6 year old child who needs that special attention, would you withhold that love and care, just because it places demands on you. I constantly have to take stock and refocus my perspective like this. See the child through a mothers eyes and then you will see that the demands and the appropriate responses are perhaps more natural. Study the selflessness of true motherhood and you will see how these DID situations highlight the selfishness in our own hearts. If those helping their DID friends do not deal with their own triggers, selfishness and insecurities then the natural consequence is to end up blaming the patient for being the way they are, which only ends up damaging them more. The mothers role is to bring acceptance for who they are and to facilitate emotional growth.


 * This is exactly the point. If the sufferer can convince you that he/she IS a child, then he/she can demand to be treated as a child and shame you if you're a bad parent. If you think that the sufferer is a needy adult who wants nurturing but wants to be IN CONTROL, then you're going to react differently. So agreement on whether or not DID is "real" is of crucial importance to people who have DID/are acting out DID.


 * I'm not saying that needs for nurturance are bad. I have a book a friend gave me, called Nonviolent Communication, that points out that everyone is acting on the basis of felt needs and that these needs aren't necessarily bad. It's just that some people adopt less than ideal strategies to get them. The book advises us to look behind the infuriating behavior to find the needs; then we can sympathize. But not necessarily give in to the behavior, or pledge ourselves to meet all the needs. It's a start to negotiating my needs/your needs/compromises.


 * I do wish that I'd understood that clearly when I was dealing with the DID person in my life. I went from being manipulable to being pissed off.   The last step, understanding that because this person was terrified of being controlled by means of his vulnerabilities and hence needed to be IN CONTROL when asking for nurturance, took a long time. I'm not sure that even understanding that would have salvaged the situation, since no human being could have been the perfect mom he wanted. But anyway ...


 * I have to go pick up a friend's daughter. Work on the believer section, if that's what bothers you, and see if you can make it less strawmanish.      Zora 02:01, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I think when we get to fleshing out this topic a bit we could use some additional pages to cover topics like "DID nurturing" (approaches and research) "DID trauma healing" (approaches and research etc), but it's early days yet.

The true beleivers section does need a lot of work, I am afraid it is too straw man ish at the moment. That is the extremities of the view are pronounced in such a way as to misrepresent the view (IMHO). My own experience is that sexual abuse is extraordinarily prevalent, so maybe I am biased.

I added a link to http://www.splitangels.org in the references

Carabas 01:20, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

very biased entry on DID
I was a staunch supporter of the wikipedia until reading this article on dissociative identity disorder. Diagnosed a year ago, I am resistant to accepting it even though there was substantial, and documented, abuse in my past that went on for many years. This article reeks of bias from the False Memory Foundation and its representatives. I can understand people being skeptical, however it does exist albeit not quite in the form that has been "popularized" by the media.

It is suggested that anyone composing an article with this subject for wikipedia does a little bit of research on it besides that of its critics. For every argument against its existence, or of it being primarily iatrogenic, there are serious studies that prove them wrong. Contrary to popular belief, this is not a disorder that someone with it chooses, nor do they share it with people that they know. It is an illness of confusion, shame, and a seemingly irradicable feeling that something is wrong inside that can never be resolved.

I hope that you either remove the entry, or perform some serious revision of it as it is an insult to many (documented) survivors of repeated abuse.


 * I replaced an earlier entry that was extremely lopsided and "pro-DID" with one that attempts to present ALL the sides of this controversial issue. The article is a bit lop-sided the other way at present, in that only the skeptical section is much elaborated; the other sections need more work. It is hard to be FAIR, you know?


 * However, it seems to me that what you're proposing is not fairness, but censorship. Calling any skepticism an INSULT doesn't allow for much discussion, does it? Nor do ad-hominem attacks on anyone that doesn't share your position. Because someone disagrees with you, that person must be ignorant? In spite of personal experience, shelves of books, and academic degrees?


 * If you think you can improve the believer section, do. It sounds as if that's roughly where your position fits.


 * Sorry I haven't done a lot of work on the article lately. I've posting lists of Filmfare award winners for the Bollywood articles and helping out at Distributed Proofreaders, which had a sudden influx of new proofreaders needing orientation. Zora 18:51, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Glacial progress
I put much of the cross-cultural material back into "Healthy Multiplicity". I hope that people here who support this position feel that it's a better presentation now. Zora 08:57, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Gulf Coast tribes?
Bluejay, good idea to edit out "sufferers". May not have been a good idea to change everything to "diagnosed with", since people may be convinced they have MPD/DID without ever having seen a doctor or gotten a diagnosis.

I removed the sentence you added re Gulf Coast tribes because several things about it troubled me.

Why an anonymous report? If this is a matter of ethnographic record, it's not exactly cloak-and-dagger stuff.


 * My source is a medical professional at the top of her field at a prestigious university. She would lose that position instantly if it became known that she took multiplicity seriously in any form. The official position of her school is that multiplicity does not exist, and that means MPD, DID, nonpathological plurality, the whole deal. What I need to do is find the references she was using for this information. --Bluejay Young 22:39, Nov 29, 2004 (UTC)

Which Gulf Coast? Lots of gulfs in the world.

Something about the sentence suggests a bogus "ethnographic present", in which some hypothesized "culture as it was just before Western impact smashed it" is carefully extracted from the messy reality on the ground. If the Gulf in question is the Gulf of Mexico, I don't think many tribes would have survived the onslaught, or that they would still be electing chiefs on the basis of "spirits".

Also, the meaning of "has many spirits" is not very well defined. Do they expect their chiefs to go into trance? How is "has many spirits" demonstrated?

I hope you can see that there are problems with the information AS PRESENTED. It might be useful info if tweaked; let's discuss it here and see if it can be re-phrased. Zora 19:30, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Not neutral?
It seems that whoever complained that the article was "insulting" to people with DID has proceeded to slap the article with a "non-neutral" label.

I wish that the anonymous denouncer would actually work on the believer section if he/she feels that the position has been slighted. I'm guessing that this is where the denouncer belongs, if the "Healthy multiplicity" and "Professionals who still find the diagnosis useful" sections aren't satisfactory to him/her. If what the denouncer wants is deletion of the "Skeptics" section, I don't think this would be right, since it does in fact represent a widespread viewpoint.

The believer section could use some work, I admit. I have a hard time doing it justice and need help from someone who holds that position. Zora 22:38, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Links need work, removed NPOV notice
Someone anonymous recently added an example to the overview. It was reported with no link (though I found that below) and as if the word of the patient had some extraordinary evidentiary value in proving the "believer" viewpoint. I'm still not sure that something that detailed belongs in the overview, but I did leave it there, just reworded a bit to make it clear that these are claims, not "facts".

I also did a preliminary sort on the links. I had a feeling that they were unbalanced; I think the sort shows that they are. There are MANY links to "proving recovered memories" sites and "multiples speak for themselves" sites, and not much for any other viewpoints. The multiple links need to be evaluated and trimmed to several of the best in each category, and the missing links supplied. That would include more links to current mainstream professional opinions on DID/MPD diagnosis and treatment.

I also removed the NPOV notice, as the person (anonymous, IP number only) who put it up there did not do anything, subsequently, to engage in a dialogue in the discussion page, or even to expand and improve the "true believer" section.

I should perhaps add that it improves the level of discourse dramatically if contributors are willing to register, take usernames, and engage in dialogue. We can only thrash out NPOV articles if people with opposing viewpoints talk TO each other. Zora 01:06, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Shaman edits
Hi, Bluejay, I hope you won't feel disrespected by my further edits on the shamanism paragraph. It's me being anthropological again. There are many folk religions where shamans are NOT trained from childhood -- and others where they are. People do not necessarily venerate the shamans; they may be regarded as weird, uncanny, but useful in emergencies. Kind of like computer geeks. But then some sects do revere their shamans. Religions that have shamans may not recognize spirit illnesses. I say MAY because I'm not sure; it would only take one counter-example to prove the thesis wrong. People who recognize spirit illnesses may not have shamans (which was true of Tonga, where I did my fieldwork). That engrained academic cautiousness is why I festooned the para with "may"s and "maybe"s. There's a fuzzy kind of general picture, but you can't say that every single instance of shamanism displays ALL the diagnostic features. Zora 03:40, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Bluejay's edits and my revisions
Hi Bluejay. Thanks for calling my attention to this article again. Most of your edits seemed to me to be useful. I made only two major modifications:


 * In a sentence near the top of the page, I changed the original phase (which was something like people who experience themselves as multiple and are self-diagnosed) to self-diagnosed multiples. The original was just too long and clunky. I hope my substitution will do.


 * That's fine. Would have changed it myself if I'd remembered.


 * I moved the info re Ralph Underwager out of the true believers section, where it interrupted the narrative flow, and into its own note. This gives it actually more space and prominence, as well as laying out both sides of the issue.

I've really got to get to work on this again, and finish the chronology and the "current professional position" sections. Zora 08:18, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * I sure hope some historical background can get in someplace, like Mary Reynolds, Ansel Bourne and the co-running spiritualists. The problem is the article getting to be too long. --Bluejay Young 22:39, Nov 29, 2004 (UTC)


 * I've recently learned the Wikipedia term "breakout article". What we need is a breakout article on the history of the idea of multiple personality. I'm sure it could easily be as long as the current article. Didn't you do some work on this at one point? You could pull up the old article, move your work over, and sketch out the rest. Zora 22:46, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Related to shamanism are some people who believe themselves to be Otherkin who have an "alternate" personality which is an animal or mythological creature of some sort. There are numerous online communities which are related to these things. Would these people bear mentioning in the article in some form or another? I might note a number of such people are pagan or classify themselves as shamanistic. Titanium Dragon 12:33, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)