The debate over DID and MPD arose in the context of the furor over repressed and later recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse, the child sex abuse panic of the 1980s, and associated stories of Satanic Ritual Abuse. In the U.S. (and to a much lesser extent in other English-speaking countries, like the U.K. and Australia), it was widely believed that sex and Satanic abuse were rampant and that they often caused MPD. More people began to suspect that their psychological problems were caused by childhood abuse and that they had MPD.
However, as the stories told by clients grew ever more bizarre, as the number of people claiming MPD spiked, as public prosecutions of daycare workers began to seem to some like Salem witch trials, the public at large grew less accepting and more hostile to stories of recovered memories, ritual abuse, and MPD.
However, there are still many mental health workers who would argue that while there was much exaggeration and bad therapy during the 1980s and early 1990s, and a few supposed MPD clients who were merely suggestible, DID is a real disorder, with real victims. It was a disorder before the child abuse hysteria, and it is still a disorder now that much of the child abuse panic has died down. This view is common enough that DID still figures in American diagnostic manuals, and MPD in those of England and Europe.
At stake is how we are to treat those experiencing multiple selves. If DID is real, then DID clients have suffered some form of childhood trauma which is adversely affecting their present lives and which requires treatment. If it is factitious, then the supposed victims are displaying something like histrionic personality disorder: the adoption of a less-than-ideal strategy for controlling others. Psychological test data have found that score profiles of individuals with DID are dissimilar from individuals with histrionic personality disorder, which is further support for the reality of the traumatic histories reported by people with DID.
Given that the stakes are so high and opinions so fundamentally opposed, it is extremely difficult to present information about multiplicity, MPD and DID in a way that all sides will accept. Perhaps the best solution is to give each side a chance to state its case. These sides might be said to be:
- “Believers”, who argue that we must trust and believe those who claim to have DID/MPD and to have recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse.
- The critics, who have challenged the believers. Many critics argue that DID is a fad rather than a real disease.
- Mental health professionals, scientists, and others who believe that DID is a valid diagnosis, while distancing themselves from the perceived excesses of the believers.
- People who believe that it is possible to be multiple and psychologically healthy. Arguments that assume all multiplicity is an illness, whether MPD or DID, do an injustice to healthy multiples. Note that the existence of psychologically healthy multiples does not preclude the existence of MPD/DID as a disorder.
Lisa Angelettie, M.S.W., is a psychotherapist, author, and life coach. She has been helping people make smarter life choices since 1998. Get more free tips like this when you subscribe to the GirlShrink newsletter .
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