I spent a year (1989) working as an attendant on a ward of a private hospital that specialized in MPD. Although I did not have as much education or clinical experience as I do now (at least I hope that's the case!) it was my impression that at least part of the experience of MPD was being "constructed" right before my eyes. By this I mean that life on the unit was an educational milieu for how to have MPD. New patients were taken aside by the more experienced ones (some of whom had been hospitalized for more than 3 years! the days of really good insurance!)and instructed in how to control the staff and doctors, how dissociation "really looks," what should cause switching, the acceptable number of "alters" to have (no one was allowed to have as many as the "famous" person with MPD whom had been written up in the New York Times) what kind of alters that a true MPD should have, etc. If this sounds cynical, it may be that it is a bit, but I actually overheard these things being talked about. It was de riguer(spelling?) for the new patients to read "Sybil," or "When Rabbit Howls," which was observable as all new patients slept on mattresses in the dayroom and I saw one after another reading the same dog-earred copies of these books. What all this amounts to is that I don't deny the phenomenon of MPD/DID, I believe it is, to some extent, a constructed phenomenon. I accept that hideous things have been done to these persons, that perhaps intense emotion triggered by memory or a perception may somehow instantiate a discontinuation of self-awareness, and that we all may be conceptualized as being different selves in different situations, times and relationships. It is some of the cultural constructs of MPD/DID that I choose to re-interpret from my own perspective(s).
Anyway, that's a somewhat simplistic rendering of some of the thinking that I have done in attempting to integrate some of these ideas. I hope that I have been helpful, or at least done no harm! Please feel free to e-mail me to discuss this thread or any other that might be interesting. My address is: aadh@mail.utexas.edu
Thanks and goodbye!
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