{"quotes":[{"text":"We can think of dissociation as psychological disconnection from one or more of three major spheres of experience: (a) the here and now, I.E., orientation to time and place; (b) other people, I.E., interpersonal communion; and (c) one’s own subjective experience, e.G., visceral sensation, physical pain, affect, or sense of identity. The various manifestations of pathological dissociation e.G., amnesia, depersonalization, identity fragmentation–can be understood as manifestations of these dimensions of disconnection.","author":"Steven N. Gold","tags":["amnesia","depersonalization","disconnection","dissociated","dissociation","dissociative-amnesia","dissociative-disorders","identity"],"id":103487,"author_id":"Steven+N.+Gold"},{"text":"I cut myself up really badly with the lid of a tin can. They took me to the emergency room, but I couldn’t tell the doctor what I had done to cut myself—I didn’t have any memory of it. The ER doctor was convinced that dissociative identity disorder didn’t exist. . . . A lot of people involved in mental health tell you it doesn’t exist. Not that you don’t have it, but that it doesn’t exist.","author":"Bessel A. van der Kolk","tags":["denial","dissociative-amnesia","dissociative-disorders","dissociative-identity-disorder","invalidation","mental-health","mental-health-bias","mental-health-stigma","mental-illness-discrimination","mental-illness-stigma"],"id":147494,"author_id":"Bessel+A.+van+der+Kolk"},{"text":"The implication that the change in nomenclature from “Multiple Personality Disorder” to “Dissociative Identity Disorder” means the condition has been repudiated and “dropped” from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of the American Psychiatric Association is false and misleading. Many if not most diagnostic entities have been renamed or have had their names modified as psychiatry changes in its conceptualizations and classifications of mental illnesses. When the DSM decided to go with “Dissociative Identity Disorder” it put “(formerly multiple personality disorder)” right after the new name to signify that it was the same condition. It’s right there on page 526 of DSM-IV-R. There have been four different names for this condition in the DSMs over the course of my career. I was part of the group that developed and wrote successive descriptions and diagnostic criteria for this condition for DSM-III-R, DSM–IV, and DSM-IV-TR.While some patients have been hurt by the impact of material that proves to be inaccurate, there is no evidence that scientifically demonstrates the prevalence of such events. Most material alleged to be false has been disputed by someone, but has not been proven false.Finally, however intriguing the idea of encouraging forgetting troubling material may seem, there is no evidence that it is either effective or safe as a general approach to treatment. There is considerable belief that when such material is put out of mind, it creates symptoms indirectly, from “behind the scenes.” Ironically, such efforts purport to cure some dissociative phenomena by encouraging others, such as Dissociative Amnesia.","author":"Richard P. Kluft","tags":["diagnosis","disinformation","dissociative-amnesia","dissociative-identity-disorder","dsm","evidence","false","hysteria","hysterican-neurosis","mental-disorder","mental-illness","misinformation","misleading","multiple-personalities","multiple-personality-disorder","psychiatric-bible","psychiatry","rumor"],"id":181347,"author_id":"Richard+P.+Kluft"},{"text":"Having DID in itself creates intense shame. A person continually has to deal with not remembering what one has said or done. Thus, the person with DID must be quick with inferences and cover-ups. Unfortunately, this often convinces her, as well as others, that she is a liar.","author":"Elizabeth Howell","tags":["amnesia","dissociative-amnesia","dissociative-identity-disorder","liar","lying","shame"],"id":247178,"author_id":"Elizabeth+Howell"},{"text":"After writing the letter Sybil lost almost two days. 'Coming to,' she stumbled across what she had written just before she had dissociated and wrote to Dr. Wilbur as follows: It's just so hard to have to feel, believe, and admit that I do not have conscious control over my selves. It is so much more threatening to have something out of hand than to believe that at any moment I can stop (I started to say 'This foolishness') any time I need to. When I wrote the previous letter, I had made up my mind I would show you how I could be very composed and cool and not need to ask you to listen to me nor to explain anything to me nor need any help. By telling you that all this about the multiple personalities was not really true I could show, or so I thought, that I did not need you. Well, it would be easier if it were put on. But the only ruse of which I'm guilty is to have pretended for so long before coming to you that nothing was wrong. Pretending that the personalities did not exist has now caused me to lose about two days.","author":"Flora Rheta Schreiber","tags":["amnesia","confession","controversy","denial","denial-of-reality","dissociative-amnesia","dissociative-identity-disorder","fake","faking","fraud","liar","lying","mpd","multiple-personalities","multiple-personality-disorder","pretending","recant","retraction","sybil","true-story","truth"],"id":272796,"author_id":"Flora+Rheta+Schreiber"},{"text":"In this chapter I restrict myself to exploring the nature of the amnesia which is reported between personality states in most people who are diagnosed with DID. Note that this is not an explicit diagnostic criterion, although such amnesia features strongly in the public view of DID, particularly in the form of the fugue-like conditions depicted in films of the condition, such as The Three Faces of Eve (1957). Typically, when one personality state, or ‘alter’, takes over from another, they have no idea what happened just before. They report having lost time, and often will have no idea where they are or how they got there. However, this is not a universal feature of DID. It happens that with certain individuals with DID, one personality state can retrieve what happened when another was in control. In other cases we have what is described as ‘co-consciousness’ where one personality state can apparently monitor what is happening when another personality state is in control and, in certain circumstances, can take over the conversation.","author":"John Morton","tags":["alter-personalities","alters","amnesia","amnesiac","consciousness","diagnosing","diagnosis","diagnostic-criteria","did","dissociation","dissociative-amnesia","dissociative-disorder","dissociative-identity-disorder","dsm","dsm5","exception-to-the-rule","forgetfulness","fugue","fugue-state","memory","memory-loss","mental-illness","misdiagnosis","misunderstanding","mpd","multiple-personalities","multiple-personality-disorder","multiplicity","personality-switch","personality-system","prejudice","states-of-consciousness","stereotypes","stigma","switching"],"id":339393,"author_id":"John+Morton"},{"text":"It all made sense — terrible sense. The panic she had experienced in the warehouse district because of not knowing what had happened had been superseded at the newsstand by the even greater panic of partial knowledge. And now the torment of partly knowing had yielded to the infinitely greater terror of knowing precisely.","author":"Flora Rheta Schreiber","tags":["amnesia","dissociation","dissociative","dissociative-amnesia","dissociative-identity-disorder","fugue","lost","mental-health","mpd","multiple-personalities","multiple-personality-disorder","multiplicty","panic","pscyhotherapy","psychiatry","recovery"],"id":447083,"author_id":"Flora+Rheta+Schreiber"},{"text":"Does the person report having had the experience of meeting people she does not know but who seem to know her, perhaps by a different name? Often, those with DID are thought by others to be lying because different parts will say different things which the host has no knowledge of.","author":"Elizabeth F. Howell","tags":["alter-personalites","contradictions","dissociative","dissociative-amnesia","dissociative-identity-disorder","faking","liar","lying","mental-illness","multiple-personality-disorder","pathological-liar","stigma"],"id":460141,"author_id":"Elizabeth+F.+Howell"},{"text":"Among DID individuals, the sharing of conscious awareness between alters exists in varying degrees. I have seen cases where there has appeared to be no amnestic barriers between individual alters, where the host and alters appeared to be fully cognizant of each other. On the other hand, I have seen cases where the host was absolutely unaware of any alters despite clear evidence of their presence. In those cases, while the host was not aware of the alters, there were alters with an awareness of the host as well as having some limited awareness of at least a few other alters. So, according to my experience, there is a spectrum of shared consciousness in DID patients. From a therapeutic point of view, while treatment of patients without amnestic barriers differs in some ways from treatment of those with such barriers, the fundamental goal of therapy is the same: to support the healing of the early childhood trauma that gave rise to the dissociation and its attendant alters.Good DID therapy involves promoting co­-consciousness. With co-­consciousness, it is possible to begin teaching the patient’s system the value of cooperation among the alters. Enjoin them to emulate the spirit of a champion football team, with each member utilizing their full potential and working together to achieve a common goal.Returning to the patients that seemed to lack amnestic barriers, it is important to understand that such co-consciousness did not mean that the host and alters were well-­coordinated or living in harmony. If they were all in harmony, there would be no “dis­ease.” There would be little likelihood of a need or even desire for psychiatric intervention. It is when there is conflict between the host and/or among alters that treatment is needed.","author":"David Yeung","tags":["alter-personalities","altered-states-of-concsciousness","alters","amnesiac","dissociation","dissociative-amnesia","dissociative-disorder","dissociative-identities","dissociative-identity-disorder","mental-disorder","mental-illness","multiplicity","psychiatry","states-of-consciousness"],"id":462619,"author_id":"David+Yeung"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":9,"pages":1}}