So, again. Claim all you want that multiple personality conditions exist (and may or may not be normal or disordered). How about hard scientific evidence? Until then, skepticism reigns. (And how can you really expect Cecil to not be skeptical?)
I’m not sure how you can get scientific evidence for an internal state. How would you test for multiplicity? The only evidence there can be is what multiples describe about themselves. And even if one used some kind of brain activity test, how would a scientist know what to look for? The most concrete thing that’s visible (besides voice, body language, and facial expression, which, granted, could be faked) is subtle eye color shifts depending on who’s in front in my partners’ system. Otherwise I don’t know what kind of scientific tests could be done, but if there was something noninvasive that could examine the way multiples’ brains work, I’m sure the results would be very interesting.
I’ve been a therapist for 11 years, worked in hospitals and Residential Treatment Centers, worked with abused and neglected kids- never saw a person who displayed or reported multiple personalities. I am not saying that it does not exists, I m just saying that I have never seen or heard about it at any of the agencies that I have worked for.
However, I’ve had quite a few people describe a sort of depersonalization thing in response to a traumatic event- you know, the feeling you get when you feel like you are not totally “you,” like you are in a dream, or you are a third party observer of your own self, perhaps even having a short period where you can’t remember what happened during an event. Maybe some of you have experienced something like this after being in a bad accident, or maybe when having to give a speech in front of a large group of people or other stressful event. Not quite the same thing, since you know that you are “you” the whole time, but it is a strange feeling you may be able to relate to.
It is funny, when I was going through my training in the late 80’s and early 90’s, I had a professor who was all to that treating the survivors of ritualistic satanic abuse-I thought it was a crock o’ dookie even then.
Finally, I think that it was uncool to throw an F bomb in the cartoon.
<< Finally, I think that it was uncool to throw an F bomb in the cartoon. >>
Slug thrives on the outrageous. Sometimes, he’s even too outre for the READER, and they make him re-do. One like this, I suspect, they chortle over, because they can do something like this as an alternate newspaper, in a way that the “family press” can’t.
I dated a woman with multiple personalites.
I started dating her at the end of HS and we continued dating for about 3 years of college.
Her therapist agreed that she had the disorder. The MD said that ‘fractured personality’ was a better description and in my gf’s case I agree.
Yes she was tramatized when she was about 14. She was raped by her brother-in-law. I did confront him about it and it did happen. Although the Dr. hypnotized her she never reported any Satanic rituals or anything like that.
In addition to supporting the notion that multiple personality disorder is extrememly rare, I would argue, besides, that the genuine cases tend to be far less dramatic and colorful than the ones in best-selling accounts such as The Three Faces of Eve and Sybil. In fact, they amount to being a different mental disorder.
William James made a landmark case study of man with the disorder. The case he studied, however, involved a man who “cracked”, changed his name, and ran away from a life he found too stressful. When found, he appeared to honestly not remember that he used to have another name, or that he had fled from his obligations. His “new” personality was not wholly unlike his old one.
James’ achievement was not in discovering that such a thing could happen, but in describing it in pathological terms. In the same way, people were observed to have schizophrenia, manic depression, and a host of other disorders before medical science evolved to the point that these conditions were isolated and described in scientific terms.
The kind of behavior James identified is considerably different from the kind of melodramatic cases which make for good reading and cinema, where a sufferer continually switches from one identity to another at the drop of a hat. I would suggest that possibly a real but rare phenomenon ran afoul of show business hype and both its frequency of occurence and its actual symptoms became exagerated.
People were known to develop amnesia and skip town long before the advent of psychiatry, yet the modern “style” of multiple personality disorder which grabs the headlines seems to have escaped everyone’s notice before the 20th Century. It is one thing for the medical profession to categorize and describe a behavioral disorder. For medical professionals to claim they have “discovered” behavior of a kind no one else has ever observed, though, surely invites skepticism; it seems to me that a real-life Sybil would be awfully conspicuous, and would arouse a lot of comment, in any era of history.
I haven’t read the article. I just looked for this thread so I could say that I thought Slug’s illustration (in particular the F-bomb) was hilarious. I understand that some people are offended by such a thing, but I must say that I don’t understand why. <shrug>
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by slipster *
**In addition to supporting the notion that multiple personality disorder is extrememly rare, I would argue, besides, that the genuine cases tend to be far less dramatic and colorful than the ones in best-selling accounts such as The Three Faces of Eve and Sybil. In fact, they amount to being a different mental disorder.
<snip>
The kind of behavior James identified is considerably different from the kind of melodramatic cases which make for good reading and cinema, where a sufferer continually switches from one identity to another at the drop of a hat.
I think the reason they’re not usually so dramatic is that there are many many multiples who are functional in the outside world, who have completely control over switching, and who communicate well among the members of the system. In my partners’ system, there isn’t “switching” so much as one person being “in front,” but others can be nearby. A person can ask for privacy, of course. But no one just takes over the body without communicating with the person who happens to be using it. And I can ask for whoever I want to talk to, and they’ll show up. Often both my partners are present at the same time, and I can talk to both of them, or several members of the system will watch a movie together.
One reason multiplicity may seem rare is that there are multiples who never go near a therapist’s office. They hold down jobs or go to school and are selective about the people to whom they reveal their multiplicity.
Well, I think in short you can’t, unless they’re not good at faking it.
I remember reading that psych students managed to get themselves admitted into many US mental institutions diagnosed with schitzophrenia, claiming they heard three words repeated over and over in their heads. Then some top psychiatrist declared that it couldn’t happen in his institution, so the guy behind it all said he would send some fake cases his way. I think about 150 potential fakes were diagnosed before the guy behind the fakes said he hadn’t sent anyone.
Perhaps it would be a bit harder to fake MPD, but if the doctor is eager for a diagnosis it shouldn’t be too hard to fake it.
Research shows that with an EEG there is an appreciable difference in the brain functioning of alters that is not present in professional actors pretending to be those alters.
I think that might be the “hard scientific evidence” some of you are looking for.
I think it would be hard to fake it 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year, etc. Living with someone and seeing the consistently different personalities of each individual in the system, different voices, etc, I spend a lot of time with them, and I can’t imagine faking it on a hourly or daily basis. My partner’s teaching job is exhausting enough; she doesn’t need to spend her energy trying to pretend to share her body w/ other people!
FWIW, I don’t use the term alters, since I believe I’m dealing with separate individuals. Alters implies that there’s one main person and a bunch of ego-states that have split off, but in my partners’ system, the original baby born in the body has long since disappeared (the abuse started in infancy). There isn’t a single person who has precedence.
What a silly idea. You know, we just lead regular lives. Work, buy groceries, pay the mortgage, spend time with my kids, sleep a lot because our jobs are exhausting. There’s nothing exotic or exciting about the fact of their multiplicity. What I admire about them is their optimism and their ability to survive a truly horrific childhood (which as I noted, many people can testify to).
My partner is a part-time math instructor at two different community colleges. She teaches basic math at one of them, and she teaches calculus and trigonometry at the other. Why do you ask? And, no, other members of the system don’t show up during class.
Are you trying to say that the other personalities never show up when it is inconvenient? Do they show up when strangers are around, and if so, how do they react?
Exactly. No one shows up when it’s inconvenient. They used to many years ago before they learned to be co-conscious and figured out how to cooperate among themselves, but now no one just pops up. The children rarely come out when strangers are around. But if anyone new comes out, I’ll introduce him/her to the person we’re talking to. My friends all know that they’re multiple, so it’s not a big surprise if I’m introducing them to another person in the system.
They have to feel pretty comfortable with someone before telling them b/c they’ve had too many experiences w/ one of the adults making a new friend, telling that person about the multiplicity after a month or two, and having the friend bailing out soon thereafter.
Just to add to my previous post, no one else would show up and take over while N is teaching math, b/c no one else knows calculus! Everybody, including the younger children, understand that N’s job is crucial for all of us to live on.