I don't believe MPD exists
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litlbit2001 — 14 years ago(July 28, 2011 05:36 PM)
There is a woman who was featured on TLC who has 15 personalities and she lives two buildings down from where I currently live. My friend's ex wife has a couple of Multiply personilities herself, because when she was a kid her father sexually abused her until she was 13. It is a real thing. Only people who want to get out of trouble use that as a defense. It's an actual disorder.
"You're a goddamn *hit sucking vampire, oh you wait til mom comes home!" -
jet_blanchard — 18 years ago(November 13, 2007 09:18 PM)
"Myself personally, I do not believe the disorder exists. Doesn't mean it doesn't, but that is just my opinion."
Makes no serious dent in your opinion, but there were people on these boards who talked about their own MPD/DID. In my opinion, you lean over too far backwards on the matter (your right, of course!). From what I've learned, it probably does exist (in a few cases) and a clinician who won't listen to his patient because he preclusively disbelieves the existence of a disorder they may have does them no good. I've been on both sides of psychology at various times, most of my life (62): one thing I know is that you always have to treat the patient, not the disease/disorder. The same with ADHD/ADD. It is the fad of the decade, anyway, and in some ways, so are both Asperger's Syndrome and Autismbut that doesn't mean they do not exist.
"Vademecum" -
indy_go_blue44 — 18 years ago(November 16, 2007 08:03 AM)
Jet, isn't autism fairly easy to diagnose? I know ADD is fairly notorious as a catch-all for behavior disorders and an easy treat-all for negligent parents (give 'em ritalin and forget 'em.) I'm not familiar with Asperger's Syndrome.
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jet_blanchard — 18 years ago(November 16, 2007 01:20 PM)
"I'm not familiar with Asperger's Syndrome."
Sometimes referred to as "High-Function Autism". Try books by Tony Attwood for more details. One case I do recall was a writer riding on an British train (not the "Hogwart's Special") who was joined in his "cabin" by another rider and great train enthusiast. The intended thinking time was given over to a lesson in the specific train that they were riding in, in more detail than most "normal" people would really care to know, including the engine, tender, caboose and passenger carsdown to where "these rivets" in their cabin were made and when and what rail yard did the final assembly. Or the lady who grew up around farm animals (Temple Grandin?") and didn't, even as a child, like the ways cattle and other livestock were "treated" by their passage through the feed lot equipment. She began designing newer, more humane and more efficient ways to move the livestock. They fixate on an idea and get down into the tiniest details of whatever they are into, but they can teach, engineer aat and explore their area of interest with others. It includes some not exactly appropriate behavior or verbalization: A social Worker called at one home, and the child who greeted her announceed their intent to "undress" her. After taking the very nervous lady's outer jacket and hanging it up, the child wandered intently away on another mission, the "undressing" being completed
Autistic Spectrum Disorders cover a wide variety of conditions, from sitting quietly rocking perpetually to some rythm no one else can hear but otherwise oblivious (once called "Childhood Schizophrenia) but no longer used), to so-called "Idiot-Savant" (also obsolete) - talents (like the kid who was handed a telephone book open to a page and before they were been told what they were to do ("find the 15th name in column 2 on this page and read it to me" they said an enormous number. When asked what that is, the kid responds "The total, I added it up." - they'd added ALL the numbers on the entire page (or BOTH pages) they saw Or the kid who can pick anything up, broken or not, open it to see how it works and often fixes things that haven't worked for years, but no one's ever been able to tell why and puts it back together out of hand. Or the kid who can pick up ANY musical instrument, examine it and begin to play like a concert virtuoso.
Asperger's is at the higher end and has been traced backwards through families. The child is clinically diagnosed, but the child's father or mother has the same level of function and idiosyncracies; tracking back, so does/did grandpa or grandma. It was discovered and described in the 40s; now it's the new thing.
It's like the questions about when which of Sybil's "selves" were "born" and how they aged - or failed to - including Vicki stopping just at adolescence and and the unexpected emergence of the new, unknown and un-named teen "self" who held Sybil's adolesence and slow maturing until the final merging and how well each copes with "their world" - and who worked in which art medium - as they knew it with one major difference: Autism/Asperger's Spectrum is more likely a purely neurologic than behavioral response.
"Vademecum" -
jet_blanchard — 17 years ago(August 19, 2008 03:03 AM)
ARTICLE ABRIDGED, BUT SECTIONS QUOTED ARE VERBATIM (COPY AND PASTE):
LAST LINE HIGHLIGHT
IS MINE. Jet
http://www.newsweek.com/id/57343
By Anne Underwood | NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated Oct 29, 2007
Even for a psychiatric patient, Karen Overhill seemed unusually devoid of hope on the day in 1989 she walked into the Chicago office of Dr. Richard Baer. As weeks of therapy grew into months, antidepressants didn't help her, at least not consistently. She was suicidaland the flat, emotionless way she stated her wish to die made Baer fear that she might actually follow through. Eventually, Karen began to volunteer stories of childhood abuse. And she mentioned odd memory lapses. She would find herself in strange places with no awareness of how she'd gotten there. She couldn't even remember having had sex with her husband, although she must have, since they had two children.
The remarkable medical journey that ensued is the subject of Baer's new book, "Switching Time." It recounts the 17-year course of Karen's therapy in all its painful detail and sheds new light on multiple personality disorder (MPD), the controversial illness that afflicted her. (Karen Overhill is a pseudonym Baer created to protect his patient and her family.) The book describes the challenges Baer faced as more and more of Karen's alter egos emergedmen, women and childrena total of 17, each with his or her own character traits, mental problems and agenda. Baer had to get to know them all, then persuade them to wipe out their individual identities by merging into one. It was the defining case of his careerand one that may have saved Karen's life.Still, it's easy to see why MPD remains controversial. Although the condition has been observed for 200 yearsand is officially recognized by the American Psychiatric Association under the formal name "dissociative identity disorder"it is rare enough that most therapists never treat a case. Some psychiatrists doubt that it exists at all, claiming it is the product of suggestion. In some cases, they're probably right. The 1973 best seller "Sybil" led to a wave of diagnoses by therapists who didn't really understand the condition. One psychiatric hospital in Maryland "had a whole ward with patientssome male, some female, some mooing like cows or barking like dogs," says Dr. Paul McHugh, former chair of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins and a leading skeptic. It didn't help that both the made-for-TV movie version of "Sybil," which starred Sally Field, and the 1957 film "The Three Faces of Eve" gave exaggerated portrayals of radical personality shifts, which made MPD seem more bizarre than believableor that the disorder was later enmeshed in the controversy over false "recovered memories" of childhood abuse. MPD became an embarrassing diagnosis in the psychiatric community.
But it didn't go away. Dr. Frank Putnamwho has studied the condition extensively, first at the National Institute of Mental Health and now at Cincinnati Children's Hospitalcontinues to receive calls from psychiatrists around the country who are stunned when a patient of theirs turns out to have the disorder. "There's nothing like seeing a patient who has it to make you believe," he says. Today there are clearer diagnostic criteria and a better understanding of the causes.
The condition, says Dr. Herbert Speigel, who occasionally treated Sybil during her therapist's absence, is "real, but rare."
"Vademecum" -
shoyt_2001 — 17 years ago(August 21, 2008 02:28 AM)
Scimetar Northerner I hope you will never be a psychologist or psychiatrist. You have closed your mind. This is why Dr. Wilbur was able to open a door into Sybil's world. She had not closed any doors. She followed the evidence. Other doctors failed to notice what was happening in the patient even though they had clues.
Your friends or yourself, would probably not recognize this if you did see it. When the people who treat mental illness only look for a way to control the person and keep them in check, they are not looking for the cause of the illness. Such is the case of most patients today unless they are able to enroll in a really good program for drug or alcohol intervention. Outside of that, there are very few affordable programs that would look in depth into anyone's mental state. -
skay_baltimore — 13 years ago(May 08, 2012 07:03 PM)
Thank you. It seems as if Scimetar Northerner is hell bent on spewing his/her ignorance in each and every thread dealing with the subject of MPD/DID. Never mind that the DSM-10 lists DID as a legitimate psychiatric disorder; Scimetar Northerner knows better.
"Love isn't what you say or how you feel, it's what you DO". (The Last Kiss) -
Purrrple — 17 years ago(September 01, 2008 05:13 AM)
It exists, and is more common than people think, but MPD/DID is nothing like know-it-all Psychiatrists believe it to be.
Just.. trust my opinion on the subject. I've neither any need nor desire to explain my expertise, just to state I've more than enough of it to know it is a very real state of existance for multiple minds to share one body.
"Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain, and most fools do." - Benjamin Franklin. -
la_cinematheque — 12 years ago(January 13, 2014 07:52 AM)
I know you left this comment many years ago, but it's too laughable not to respond to. Everyone should accept your anonymous internet comment as fact on blind faith? Really, you REALLY think that's the way intelligent adults should engage with the world? Unbelievable.
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Raven34 — 17 years ago(November 04, 2008 09:24 AM)
There are cynics for everything in the world. Your not believing the disorder exists doesn't make it any less real to to those who are diagnosed with it each day.It DOES exist. My heart goes out to those who have been tortured in the ways Shirley and others were. It is so difficult listening to that.
Raven
Does Not Suffer From MPD -
indy_go_blue44 — 15 years ago(December 22, 2010 07:37 PM)
Over the summer I've befriended my back yard neighbor who is bipolar. He's pretty well controlled with medication, but it's interesting (and sad) to note his occasional extremes.
I'll admit I didn't "see" his condition until after he had told me his father was near death after a heart attack. After not seeing him for several days and assuming he was spending time with his dad, I saw his wife hanging laundry in the back yard and asked how ****'s dad was doing? She said, "he's fine. Why?" I explained and she told me about his condition and that when he's manic he's a world class liar.
I never worked as a psych nurse but I did work with patients with both medical and psychological problems. All I saw with **** were what appeared to be normal periods of happiness and sadness the same thing I see in people around me everyday, myself included.
My point in this ramble is that in a lifetime it's possible that we've known someone with DID, but because we saw only a certain personality or accepted their behavior as idiosyncracies, we never thought about them being "someone" else.
He always follows the creek. -
ceebeegee — 14 years ago(June 08, 2011 03:22 PM)
My stepmother has a Ph.D. in psychology and one of her specialties is MPD, so yes, it is real. For some weird reason, there seems to be a small group of (AFAICT) mostly men who seem determined to disprove it.
edited for spelling -
Trixie27 — 12 years ago(June 06, 2013 11:38 AM)
These type of posts debunking the reality of MPD/DID fall into the category of how many people choose to live their lives- IN DENIAL. DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder) definitely exists and is a very painful, confusing mental disorder for people who were severely traumatized in their childhood. RMS (Repressed Memory Syndrome) also exists, primarily due to physical and sexual abuse by a parent or close family member. Those people denying it's existence, mostly males who were accused of the abuse, debunk it for obvious reasons. If you have experienced any level of trauma as a child, you know this is all real- no matter how horrific it sounds to others. These disorders manifest as survival coping mechanisms for fragile, young minds. Thankfully, we have a society that is more open to learning about physical, sexual and emotional child abuse, not sweeping it under the rug or turning a blind eye like in the past. The safer an abuse victim feels, the more they will share. Sometimes it is decades after the abuse occurred and after going to several therapists or psychiatric hospitals. I've met quite a few people diagnosed with DID and that I suspected suffered from the disorder. One fascinating story I heard in a therapy group I was in came from a women in her late 20s whose alter came out while she was driving and she almost crashed her car because that alter didn't know how to drive! She was not lying and had no reason to. The disorder prevented her from carrying on normal relationships or keeping a job. It's heartbreaking to see what people who have DID actually go through before their alters are successfully merged. It can take years of therapy, if it ever happens. Repressed trauma can resurface if triggered by another traumatic event.
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tightjeansdude — 12 years ago(April 02, 2014 11:28 PM)
Well I believe it does exist, because I have it. I'm 100% serious. My case is not exactly as depicted in the film 'Sybil' though, for example I don't have the 'black outs' like she did where she can't remember what was going on when another personality would pop out. I am aware of what's going on the whole time another personality comes out. I have at least 3 other personalities. I've had this since I was very young. I don't see anything really wrong with it either. It's just my way of coping with certain situations that life throws at me. I'm not keen on it being classified as a mental 'disorder'. For me, this so-called 'disorder' has always helped me to MAINTAIN order. In the film Sybil, Dr. Wilbur once described Sybil's condition as a 'creative alternative to insanity' which is a pretty good way of putting it. For people like myself who have this condition, it's actually what KEEPS us sane and helps us get through the pressures of life. Others cope by by smoking, drinking, drugging, meditation, exercise, etc. This is just another way.
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jaroslaw99 — 9 years ago(September 14, 2016 05:20 AM)
Scimetar - I find it interesting you reference what you know and people who work in mental health that you know have never encountered MPD. How many people do you know working in mental health? The world is a big place with billions of people! I'm assuming you don't know everyone nor have you read everything. That said, I doubt if MPD is nearly as widespread as alluded to after the movie Sybil came out. But there are probably a few people that actually have it. Why not? Idiot Savants can play the piano with no lessons. A few people are geniuses. A few guys are hung like horses. A few people have amazing singing voices without training. Now that repressed memory syndrome business I think was a real hoax. Further reading from sources here make it pretty clear Sybil was a hoax too.