To imagine what it's like to be multiple, think back to when you were in elementary school and high school and having to do projects of group work. That's what it's like to be multiple. It's a 24/7 group work project on life.

It's good that you're doing research with groups of actual multiples. Just don't forget to listen to what we're saying. A lot of multiples disagree with the pyschological approach. Not all of them fit the trauma model. A lot of them work better as a group than they did pretending to be single. The therapy approach often leads patients to confuse their symptoms of PTSD as being symptoms of DID when they're separate things. A good number of the people you see being referred to as multiple and plural would deny having DID. DID is separated from multiplicity because DID is a disorder and living as a group is just another way of life. A more indepth explanation can be found here: http://www.livejournal.com/users/pengke/29196.html

Here are some sites on this side of multiplicity:
http://www.astraeasweb.net/plural/
http://www.kitsune.cx/blackbirds/layman/
http://www.tanuki.cx/pavilion/
http://commune.jinkies.org.uk/system.pl
http://www.kitsune.cx/~amorpha/

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I liked your essay. Your writing is very clear and well-organized.

But I'm wondering...

"Unfortunately, the psychology field views multiplicity itself as the disorder so many times the treatment focuses on eradicating the multiplicity instead of restoring order."

Do you think that integration is impossible, or not a potentially positive outcome? It seems that there are people who say, "I used to have DID, I was able to successfully integrate, and now I am happier and healthier." Are they in denial?

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Integration should never be the goal on therapy. It is counterproductive. It teaches the other members of the system that they are not as important as the one who uses the body the most or the one that was in the body first. It tells people that they only have a right to exist as long as they're serving a purpose. It will prevent the members of the system from being able to work together and restore order to their lives. Therapy should be for working out issues and helping the group to build communication and cooperation. If after that's established, the system (the whole system in agreement) believes integration would be best for them, then they could try for it.

Integration itself is a tricky subject. Many multiples say they have never heard of a permanent integration. Systems in therapy sometimes identified thousands of system members by labelling any variation in behavior as being a new person. Then when they find out there are not that many members they think it's because some of them have merged. Some people will say they have integrated when really all that's happened is the others in the system have left them alone or gone dormant. We've seen times where learning to live cooperatively was called integration. There have also been cases of multiples faking integration to get released from hospitals. Some people weren't really multiple at all and used integration to quit the game. Some of the DID patients might have been misdiagnosed and their integration was simply them returning to their normal single thought patterns. So when someone says they are happily integrated they could mean any number of things. We are sceptical of integration especially since they rarely report a new conglomerate person, just the same old host supposedly housing new memories.

And in case you're wondering, people mis-identifying as multiple is common enough to be a problem. That's why so few psychologists believe multiples exist. Some do it on purpose because they think it's cool. Others are just giving names to different sides of their personality because that's what they think multiplicity is. Some are convinced by their therapist and start acting to fit their diagnosis. The cooperative approach to multiplicity works well with this. In therapy it means you can work on any depression, anxiety, random issues separately from how you address the multiplicity. And it gives the people a chance to try and see if the multiple approach works for them and discard it if it doesn't fit without compromising their therapy. Oh, and when choosing someone to let your patient correspond with, you should read the individual's journals and avoid the people with high quotients of drama and BS.

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"Oh, and when choosing someone to let your patient correspond with, you should read the individual's journals and avoid the people with high quotients of drama and BS."

LOL...yes, that was my plan. :-)

Funny how all sides, even the true multiples themselves, seem to agree that not everyone who says he or she is a multiple really is. I guess naming your depressed self Eeyore and your manic self Tigger doesn't make you a multiple, eh?

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It would be naive to believe that people are always what they claim. You've seen some of the multiple communities out there. Do you really think that every single example of multiplicity that you've found is beyond a doubt definitely multiple?

You'd be surprised how many people can't grasp that we're not just aspects of someone's personality. Even the so-called DID experts struggle with it. (Hence all of the references to sex alters and angry alters.) Sometimes you'll find people that say when they're happy they're being Tigger and when they're sad they're being Eeyore but that's not how it works in multiplicity. When my brother is using our body, I'm not him; I'm still me and we each have our own happy and sad sides.

- A

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Sorry to jump in..I was visiting your journal, and this discussion caught my eye.
For what it's worth, I wholeheartedly agree with everything Pengke said, especially with regard to integration.
We all have parallel processing. You, even being a oneselfer as you are, (the term singlet being so hotly discussed!) have a number of different brain functions happening simultaneously. Otherwise, your heart would not be beating at the same time as you think about your client.
For many multiples, their plurality is a more complex form of parallel processing. These are people who are better off, who feel more complete, when they respect and validate these simultaneously functioning, somewhat autonomously organized, ereas of their mind.
Clearly I am not a research psychologist, judging from the awkward terminology. However, I can tell you this. I have had long periods..five years at a time, where I was completely unaware of my multiplicity, and was for all intents and purposes acting as a single self. More dreary, dysfunctional years I have never beheld. I wouldnt return to such a state for anything in the world, because that is just not who we are and how we operate, at our best.
If your client would like to correspond with me for any reason, I could be reached at lotswife9@yahoo.

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Not to further hijack the poor guy's post but you're a bit confused about your idea of parallel processing. They would not actually be separate areas of the brain being used. It would instead be two or more simultaneous chains of signals accessing all areas of the brain. I, personally, have a medical background (mostly in orthopedics) so I've written a highly theoritical essay about how this could work. http://www.livejournal.com/users/pengke/5580.html

- A

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Oh yes, quite right. By 'somewhat autonomous ereas of mind', I did not mean seperate locations in the physical brain. Thank you for clarifying, because I hadnt realized how that sounded. I will check out your essay now.

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I thought I would check out your journal after you posted in multiplicity earlier today. I hope it's alright to post here.

I was curious to know what your previous beliefs were on DID before you were assigned the patient you're currently working with. When people talked about having DID or simply about it, did you think they were all just faking it or were strange for believing it existed? I'm just curious, because I've had the problem where I was once in a hospitalized setting and decided to tell doctors and nurses about being multiple. I was then diagnosed with schizophrenia on the basis that I was having auditory hallucinations. Basically what I was telling them was that I could hear others within my group, but they misconstrued my explanations even after I attempted to reiterate that they weren't a symptom of schizophrenia -- obviously I wasn't believed and had to deal with an incorrect diagnosis for the next several year until I just stopped saying anything about my multiplicity. The doctors emphatically told me that DID didn't exist AT ALL. I was just wondering if you might be able to give me some insight into the thought processes behind not believing in the existance of MPD/DID/multiplicity, since you stated above that you yourself didn't believe in it until you met that specific patient.

I know this is a bit of a broad question, but I thought I'd throw it out there. I hope you don't mind. :)
Regards,
Juliana of WhisperSung

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"I thought I would check out your journal after you posted in multiplicity earlier today. I hope it's alright to post here."

Sure.

"I was curious to know what your previous beliefs were on DID before you were assigned the patient you're currently working with. When people talked about having DID or simply about it, did you think they were all just faking it or were strange for believing it existed?"

I should clarify. I didn't actively disbelieve in DID, I was just skeptical because it seemed so hard to grasp, and so unlike any other condition, even in the dissociative family. Throughout my career in mental health (keep in mind I've only been out of school 2 years), I'd never knowingly met someone with DID. Nor did I learn about it in any detail in a class or hear a colleague discussing a client. I'm still convinced that real DID/multiplicity is pretty damn rare.

"I'm just curious, because I've had the problem where I was once in a hospitalized setting and decided to tell doctors and nurses about being multiple. I was then diagnosed with schizophrenia on the basis that I was having auditory hallucinations. Basically what I was telling them was that I could hear others within my group, but they misconstrued my explanations even after I attempted to reiterate that they weren't a symptom of schizophrenia -- obviously I wasn't believed and had to deal with an incorrect diagnosis for the next several year until I just stopped saying anything about my multiplicity. The doctors emphatically told me that DID didn't exist AT ALL. I was just wondering if you might be able to give me some insight into the thought processes behind not believing in the existance of MPD/DID/multiplicity, since you stated above that you yourself didn't believe in it until you met that specific patient."

I want you to totally understand that I was doubtful, not actively disbelieving. I think the problem is that mental health workers have little training about DID. Especially in a hospital environment, where most treatment is short-term and focused on meds and milieu therapy, workers get used to the "bread and butter" diagnoses such as depression, bipolar, schizophrenia, and PTSD. Complicating things is that they probably treat some people (like my client) who are multiples AND have a more common disorder.

For what it's worth, my agency's doc absolutely does believe in DID. More education on this subject for MH workers seems to be needed.

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"I should clarify. I didn't actively disbelieve in DID, I was just skeptical because it seemed so hard to grasp, and so unlike any other condition, even in the dissociative family. Throughout my career in mental health (keep in mind I've only been out of school 2 years), I'd never knowingly met someone with DID. Nor did I learn about it in any detail in a class or hear a colleague discussing a client. I'm still convinced that real DID/multiplicity is pretty damn rare."

I think I can somewhat understand that. When we first became aware of one another, some of us (including myself) didn't believe that the others truly existed as unique people in their own right. Probably due, in part, to our current psychiatrist's and psychologist's adamant statments that MPD/DID/multiplicity didn't exist at all. It's not easy to grasp something like this and try to deal with it, especially when the people officially trained and supposedly knowledgeable about such things state that it doesn't exist.

I, too, think that DID/MPD based on the DSM-IV criteria is extremely rare.

"I want you to totally understand that I was doubtful, not actively
disbelieving. I think the problem is that mental health workers have
little training about DID. Especially in a hospital environment, where
most treatment is short-term and focused on meds and milieu therapy,
workers get used to the "bread and butter" diagnoses such as depression,
bipolar, schizophrenia, and PTSD. Complicating things is that they
probably treat some people (like my client) who are multiples AND have a
more common disorder."

Again, I totally agree with you that the rate of comorbidity is probably very high. I know several people who identify as multiple who have attempted to seek help for other disorders (e.g. depression or GAD). Explaining to a therapist that one is multiple, unfortunately, often leads to talks about treating the multiplicity through means of integration or some other method instead of treating the problem that the client originally sought help for.

"For what it's worth, my agency's doc absolutely does believe in DID. More
education on this subject for MH workers seems to be needed."

I agree. We are currently planning on applying to PhD programs in Clinical Psychology and want to research such things as the effects of trauma on language and memory as well as patterns of dissociation in trauma victims (of course, we'd also like to study the DSM diagnosis of MPD/DID in greater length, too, but interest in that field as a serious research topic doesn't seem to have caught on yet. It almost seems as if it's still a slightly taboo subject in the mental health field).

Regards,
Juliana of WhisperSung

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wow that's so interesting. please post any details you feel comfortable with. from what I understand, it comes from extreme physical and/or sexual abuse.I haven't seen a patient with it yet, but i'm facinated.

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Yes, in her case she was subjected to ritualistic physical and sexual abuse by her parents. But many multiples state that they were not abused, so this can't be generalized to all cases.

You're not likely to come across DID in a crisis intervention context. It seems that people are often in Tx for depression, bipolar, anxiety, etc. for several years before DID is recognized. On the other hand, there are others who either fake it, or think they have it but don't.

Some people find having multiple personalities to be a strength, not a disorder. And there is controversy as to whether integration is a realistic, or appropriate, goal of therapy. My client DOES consider it a disorder, because it causes harmful behavior and interferes with her social life.

If you want to research the subject you should look for both clinical writing on "DID", and writing on "multiplicity" by those who have multiple selves and don't consider it a disorder.

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Well... Isn't this a touchy topic in the mental health field? Unless DID is different than MPD (which it may be), I have read some great articles and essays disputing the very existence of this disorder, especially after 'When Rabbit Howls' brought a bit of publicity to the subject.

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No, they are the same thing. I'm convinced from experience with my client, hearing about others treated by our doc, and my research and discussions over the last few days that it is 100% real. That being said, the consensus is that it is pretty rare, and may often be wrongly diagnosed.

The DSM-IV TR, the official catalogue of mental disorders, does recognize it in the dissociative family.

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Per your skeletal page: a free online copy of the novel Fight Club

http://www.geocities.com/tedregis666/index2.html

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Thank you. But I have a hard time reading books online so I'll probably just get it out of the library.

Oh man, my homepage needs updated BAD.

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