Professionals who still find the DID diagnosis useful
Some professionals admit that uncritical belief and questionable therapeutic practices were rife during the heyday of the recovered memories/ritual abuse/MPD mania. However, they insist that publicity or no publicity, some patients would still have DID and still require treatment.
They argue that DID is demonstrably not a histrionic personality disorder, since psychological test profiles of individuals with DID differ from those of individuals with histrionic personality disorder. Furthermore, they say that sceptics are simply ignorant of the DID diagnostic criteria, and that better understanding of the criteria is demonstrably correlated with a decrease in scepticism.
Mainstream opinion now says:
A pushy therapist can lead patients to recover false memories. Many supposed memory recovery methods, like hypnosis or dream work, are unreliable. Any therapist working with patients who claim to be abuse survivors (or whom they suspect to be abuse survivors) should be scrupulously neutral, careful to avoid suggestion, and wary of uncorroborated claims.
A therapist should work with "alters" if they come up spontaneously, but should not reward the patient for displaying them.
Mental health professionals and researchers working with dissociative disorders can join an organization called The International Society for the Study of Dissociation. ISSD has developed treatment guidelines for dissociative adults (now in their third revision, 2005) and children, available at their website. Earlier versions of the adult guidelines have been cited as a standard of care for DID in various legal contexts.
Healthy multiplicity
Some professionals and multiples would say that multiplicity is not inherently dysfunctional. So long as there is co-consciousness and no loss of memory, so long as the various "selves" can communicate and negotiate with each other, multiples can lead happy and productive lives. It is mere prejudice and bigotry to insist that everyone be a singleton (have a single "self").
Some contend that the unity of the self is an illusion and that everyone is fundamentally multiple (an opinion similar to the observations of William James). Others take the position that some people are inherently singletons, some inherently multiple, and that people should be allowed to express themselves as they are. Independent or self-recognized multiples are beginning to form groups like those established by autistic people, to speak for themselves and educate the public.
Truddi Chase, author of the widely read When Rabbit Howls, is one believer in healthy multiplicity. Her "selves" rejected integration and live as a cooperative. Another is therapist Dr. David Caul, who treated Billy Milligan. He said of multiplicity therapy "It seems to me that after treatment you want a functional unit, be it a corporation, a partnership, or a one-owner business." Dr. Caul was a past president of ISSD.
There is a fair bit of cross-cultural evidence to suggest that a small but persistent fraction of humans everywhere experience themselves as multiple. Many religions recognize shamans, people who claim to communicate with and be possessed by gods or spirits. Devotees visit the shaman, who may go into trance and speak with the god's voice, making predictions or giving advice. Some religions may also attribute some illnesses to spirit possession. Those who recover from possession may go on to become shamans. This could be seen as a transition from dysfunctional to functional multiplicity.
In yet other religions, like voodoo and the orisha religions of Africa, all devotees aim to be possessed by the gods. Here, multiplicity is not a dysfunction, but a spiritual goal.
While such evidence suggests a common psychological mechanism for multiplicity, it also highlights the influence of the surrounding culture on the perception and subjective experience of multiplicity. For example, people in other cultures who are multiple do not express their other selves as "parts of themselves", but as independent souls or spirits. There is no evident link between multiplicity, dissociation or recovered memories, and -- surprisingly -- between multiplicity and sexual abuse. Belief that multiplicity is invariably associated with abuse and dissociation may characterize the "late 20th century Western" template for multiplicity, known to some in the psychiatric community as "the post-Wilburian paradigm".
*Note on FMSF (False Memory Syndrome Foundation)
Believers say that the FMSF protects pedophiles. The FMSF will admit that it cannot be sure that all of its members are innocent of abuse, as it does not, and cannot, investigate all prospective members.
Indeed, one of the founders of the FMSF, Ralph Underwager, was later found to have argued for better understanding and toleration of pedophilia in a 1993 interview with a Dutch magazine. Underwager resigned from the FMSF that same year, while claiming that his views had been misrepresented.
Lisa Angelettie, M.S.W., is a psychotherapist, author, and an online advice expert. She has been helping people make smarter life choices since 1998. Visit her for Advice & Counseling, or take a free Depression Screening today.
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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Dissociative Identity Disorder". You are free to copy & use this article under the terms of the license. *Please note that a courtesy copy of your publication would be appreciated.
