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.

~ Elizabeth F. Howell

Elizabeth F. Howell Alter Personalites Contradictions Dissociative Dissociative Amnesia Dissociative Identity Disorder Faking Liar Lying Mental Illness Multiple Personality Disorder Pathological Liar Stigma

Although Dissociative Disorders have been observed from the beginnings of psychiatry, the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-III-R Dissociative Disorders (Steinberg 1985) was the first diagnostic instrument for the comprehensive evaluation of dissociative symptoms and to diagnose the presence of Dissociative Disorders.

~ Marlene Steinberg

Marlene Steinberg Diagnosis Diagnostic Criteria Dissociation Dissociative Dissociative Disorder Dissociative Disorders Dissociative Identity Disorder Dissociative States Mental Illness Mpd Multiple Personalities Multiple Personality Disorder Skeptic Skepticism

...the vast majority of these [dissociative identity disorder] patients have subtle presentations characterized by a mixture of dissociative and PTSD symptoms embedded with other symptoms, such as posttraumatic depression, substance abuse, somatoform symptoms, eating disorders, and self-destructive and impulsive behaviors.2,10A history of multiple treatment providers, hospitalizations, and good medication trials, many of which result in only partial or no benefit, is often an indicator of dissociative identity disorder or another form of complex PTSD.

~ Bethany L. Brand

Bethany L. Brand Complex Ptsd Dissociation Dissociative Dissociative Disorder Dissociative Identity Disorder Mental Illness Misdiagnosis Mpd Multiple Personality Disorder Posttraumatic Psychiatric Drugs Psychiatry

Prior to the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), the diagnosis of Dissociative Identity Disorder had been referred to as Multiple Personality Disorder. The renaming of this diagnosis has caused quite a bit of confusion among professionals and those who live with DID. Because dissociation describes the process by which DID begins to develop, rather than the actual outcome of this process (the formation of various personalities), this new term may be a bit un

~ Karen Marshall

Karen Marshall Alter Personalities Alters Dissociation Dissociative Disorder Dissociative Identities Dissociative Identity Disorder Dsm Mental Health Mental Illness Multiple Personalities Multiple Personality Disorder Multiplicity Psychiatry

Shortly after I began work with Teresa, I acquired another MPD client, a supposedly schizophrenic young man I will call Tony. He called in to the clinic on a day I was on telephone duty, saying he was having flashbacks of ritual abuse.” I did not yet know what that was. Tony became my client. He could be quite entertaining. I have a vivid memory of him as a three-year-old, Tiny Tony,” standing on his head on my office couch, and running down the hall to try unsuccessfully to make it to the bathroom. He had in his head the entire rock band of Guns’n’Roses, and I got to know Axl, the band leader, quite well. I remember the time Tony was in hospital and I went to visit him; Axl popped out and said, Remember, we’re schizophrenic in here!

~ Alison Miller

Alison Miller Alter Personalities Alters Dissociation Dissociative Disorder Dissociative States Mental Illness Misdignosis Mpd Multiple Personality Disorder Ritual Abuse Schizophrenia Schizophrenic

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.

~ Richard P. Kluft

Richard P. Kluft 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

PART 2 I felt doomed to death,But in a flash, Before I could reduce my thoughts To an emotion, I felt a mass leave my body:Departing. Then my mind becomes anonymous As is each night. Just unfinished thoughts, and a deep sickness inside,As I was forced to swallow it, Something I've tried to bury deep inside mypsyche to this day. (poem written by alter personality)

~ Alice Jamieson

Alice Jamieson Dissociation Dissociative Dissociative Identity Disorder Mental Health Mental Illness Multiple Personality Disorder Split Personality

The word is dissociate. There is no 'a' before the 'ss'. People invariably say dis-a-ssociate, which, if you're suffering Disso-ciative Identity Disorder/Multiple Personality Disorder, can be irritating. People then want to know how many personalities I have and the answer is: I don't know. The first book about Multiple Personality Disorder to make an impact was Flora Rheta Schreiber's Sybil, published in 1973, which carries the subtitle: The True and Extraordinary Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Separate Personalities. Corbett H. Thigpen and Hervey M. Cleckley published the controversial The Three Faces of Eve much earlier in 1957, and Pete Townshend from The Who wrote the song 'Four Faces'. People seem to feel safe with numbers. The truth is more complicated. The kids emerged over time. Billy, the boisterous five-year-old, was at first the most dominant. But he slowly stood aside for JJ, the self-confident ten-year-old who appears when Alice is under stress and handles complicated situations like travelling on the Underground and meeting new people. The first entity to visit was the external voice of the Professor. But he had a choir of accomplices without names. So, how many actual alter personalities are there? I would say more than fifteen and less than thirty, a combination of protectors, persecutors and friends - my own family tree.

~ Alice Jamieson

Alice Jamieson Dissociation Dissociative Dissociative Identity Disorder Mental Health Mental Illness Multiple Personalities Multiple Personality Disorder Split Personality

Another of the difficulties of having DID is the denial. DID is a disorder of denial. It has to be because if the original person knew about the alters and felt their pain, they would either go crazy and be hospitalized permanently, or would die.

~ Eve N. Adams

Eve N. Adams Alters Crazy Denial Did Dissociation Dissociative Identity Disorder Insane Mental Health Mental Illness Mpd Multiple Personality Disorder Split Personality

Once I had found the courage to tell Rebecca about the children in my head, it wasn't so hard in the coming months to tell Roberta. On the train from Huddersfield one day in May I made a roll call of the usual suspects: Baby Alice; Alice 2, who was two years old and liked to suck sticky lollipops; Billy; Samuel; Shirley; Kato; and the enigmatic Eliza. There was boy I would grow particularly fond of named limbo, who was ten, but like Eliza he was still forming. There were others without names or specific behaviour traits. I didn't want to confuse the issue with this crowd of 'others' and just counted off the major players with their names, ages and personalities, which Roberta scribbled down on a pad. Then she looked slightly embarrassed. 'You know, I've met Billy on a few occasions, and Samuel once too,' she said. 'You're joking.' I felt betrayed. 'Why didn't you tell me?' 'I wanted it to come from you, Alice, when you were ready.' For some reason I pulled up my sleeves and showed he my arms. 'That's Kato,' I said, 'or Shirley.' She looked a bit pale as she studied the scars. I had feeling she didn't know what to say. The problem with counsellors is that they are trained to listen, not to give advice or diagnosis. We sat there with my arms extended over the void between us like evidence in court, then I pushed down my sleeves again. 'I'm so sorry, Alice,' she said finally and I shrugged. 'It's not your fault, is it?' Now she shrugged, and we were quiet once more.

~ Alice Jamieson

Alice Jamieson Dissociation Dissociative Dissociative Identity Disorder Mental Health Mental Illness Multiple Personality Disorder Psych Split Personality Therapy

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

~ Flora Rheta Schreiber

Flora Rheta Schreiber Amnesia Dissociation Dissociative Dissociative Amnesia Dissociative Identity Disorder Fugue Lost Mental Health Mpd Multiple Personalities Multiple Personality Disorder Multiplicty Panic Pscyhotherapy Psychiatry Recovery

My body was a Pandora’s box of aches and pains. When Grandpa died all the ailments came jumping out. I was forever twitching and shaking. I had a persistent sore throat and had difficulty swallowing except when I was taking nips from my illicit cocktail. I was constantly constipated, holding everything in — a disorder that had started when I was two years old. It burned when I passed urine, and my migraines were so severe it felt on occasions as if I were going blind.

~ Alice Jamieson

Alice Jamieson Aches Child Rape Child Sex Abuse Dissociation Dissociative Dissociative Identity Disorder Headaches Mental Health Migraines Multiple Personality Disorder Paedophile Ring Pain Pandora S Box Ritual Abuse Secrets Sexual Abuse Survivor Victim

Dissociative parts of the personality are not actually separate identities or personalities in one body, but rather parts of a single individual that are not yet functioning together in a smooth, coordinated, flexible way. P14

~ Suzette Boon

Suzette Boon Dissociative Disorder Dissociative Identity Disorder Mental Disorder Multiple Personalities Multiple Personality Disorder Personality Personality System Ptsd

The DID patient is a single person who experiences himself or herself as having separate alternate identities that have relative psychological autonomy from one another. At various times, these subjective identities may take executive control of the person’s body and behavior and/or influence his or her experience and behavior from “within.” Taken together, all of the alternate identities make up the identity or personality of the human being with DID.- Guidelines for Treating Dissociative Identity Disorder in Adults, Third Revision, p7

~ James A. Chu

James A. Chu Alter Alternate Identity Dissociative Identities Dissociative Identity Disorder Mental Disorder Multiple Personality Disorder Personality

In the same way that the women's movement of the seventies and eighties brought rape and incest into public consciousness, we can do the same with the causes and reality of dissociation and multiplicity.

~ Carolyn Spring

Carolyn Spring Abuse Survivors Child Abuse Child Sexual Abuse Dissociation Dissociative Disorders Dissociative Identity Disorder Incest Mental Health Mental Health Stigma Multiple Personalities Multiple Personality Disorder Multiplicity Require Survivors Trauma Survivors

When a client enters therapy with a prior diagnosis, it might be difficult for the therapist to think outside of the box presented. One reason a dissociative individual might have several different diagnoses, however, is that as different parts present, they may also be presenting with diagnostic issues that are different from the host. Such differences especially make sense given the nature of DID.

~ Deborah Bray Haddock

Deborah Bray Haddock Dissociation Dissociative Dissociative Identity Disorder Mental Health Misdiagnosis Multiple Personality Disorder

Do You Have DID?Determining if you have DID isn’t as easy as it sounds. In fact, many clinicians and psychotherapists have such difficulty figuring out whether or not people have DID that it typically takes them several years to provide an accurate diagnosis. Because many of the symptoms of DID overlap with other psychological diagnoses, as well as normal occurrences such as forgetfulness or talking to yourself, there is a great deal of confusion in making the diagnosis of DID. Although this section will provide you with information which may help you determine if you have DID, it is a good idea to consult with a professional in the mental health field so that you can have further confirmation of your findings.

~ Karen Marshall

Karen Marshall Clinicians Dissociation Dissociative Identity Disorder Dsm Mental Disorder Mental Health Misdiagnosis Multiple Personality Disorder Psychotherapists

Despite the growing clinical and research interest in dissociative symptoms and disorders, it is also true that the substantial prevalence rates for dissociative disorders are still disproportional to the number of studies addressing these conditions. For example, schizophrenia has a reported rate of 0.55% to 1% of the normal population (Goldner, Hus, Waraich, & Somers, more or less similar to the prevalence of DID. Yet a PubMed search generated 25,421 papers on research related to schizophrenia, whereas only 73 publications were found for DID-related research.

~ Paul H. Blaney

Paul H. Blaney Dissociative Disorders Dissociative Identity Disorder Dsm Funding Mental Health Mental Health Stigma Multiple Personality Disorder Psychiatry Research Split Personality Stigma

The lifetime prevalence of dissociative disorders among women in a general urban Turkish community was 18.3%, with 1.1% having DID (ar, Akyüz, & Doan, 2007). In a study of an Ethiopian rural community, the prevalence of dissociative rural community, the prevalence of dissociative disorders was 6.3%, and these disorders were as prevalent as mood disorders (6.2%), somatoform disorders (5.9%), and anxiety disorders (5.7%) (Awas, Kebede, & Alem, 1999). A similar prevalence of ICD-10 dissociative disorders (7.3%) was reported for a sample of psychiatric patients from Saudi Arabia (AbuMadini & Rahim, 2002).

~ Paul H. Blaney

Paul H. Blaney Africa Dissociative Disorders Dissociative Identity Disorder Dsm Ethiopia Mental Health Multiple Personality Disorder Psychiatry Saudi Arabia Split Personality

During this hour in the waking streets I felt at ease, at peace; my body, which I despised, operated like a machine. I was spaced out, the catchphrase my friends at school used to describe their first experiments with marijuana and booze. This buzzword perfectly described a picture in my mind of me, Alice, hovering just below the ceiling like a balloon and looking down at my own small bed where a big man lay heavily on a little girl I couldn’t quite see or recognize. It wasn’t me. I was spaced out on the ceiling. I had that same spacey feeling when I cooked for my father, which I still did, though less often. I made omelettes, of course. I cracked a couple of eggs into a bowl, and as I reached for the butter dish, I always had an odd sensation in my hands and arms. My fingers prickled; it didn’t feel like me but someone else cutting off a great chunk of greasy butter and putting it into the pan. I’d add a large amount of salt — I knew what it did to your blood pressure, and I mumbled curses as I whisked the brew. When I poured the slop into the hot butter and shuffled the frying pan over the burner, it didn’t look like my hand holding the frying-pan handle and I am sure it was someone else’s eyes that watched the eggs bubble and brown. As I dropped two slices of wholemeal bread in the toaster, I would observe myself as if from across the room and, with tingling hands gripping the spatula, folded the omelette so it looked like an apple envelope. My alien hands would flip the omelette on to a plate and I’d spread the remainder of the butter on the toast when the two slices of bread leapt from the toaster. ‘Delicious,’ he’d say, commenting on the food before even trying it.

~ Alice Jamieson

Alice Jamieson Cooking Derealization Dissociation Dissociative Dissociative Identity Disorder Mental Health Multiple Personality Disorder Out Of Body Sexual Abuse Spaced Out Spacey Survivor Unreal

It is my hope that this book helps those who know and love people with DID: family members, lovers, coworkers, and friends. It is also my hope that those charged with intervening in families in which there is violence will take away a more nuanced approach to their important work, informed by a deeper understanding of trauma.Most of all, I hope that those of you who have DID know that the disorder itself is an incredible survival technique. You should feel proud to have survived. Trauma has had a major impact on my life, as it has on yours, but I’ve learned that my life extends beyond the pain and darkness. Survivors of trauma are full of life, creativity, courage, and love. We are more than the sum of our parts.

~ Olga Trujillo

Olga Trujillo Abuse Survivors Dissociative Identity Disorder Mpd Multiple Personality Disorder Trauma

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.

~ Flora Rheta Schreiber

Flora Rheta Schreiber Controllability Denial Denial Of Reality Dissociative Identity Disorder Lack Of Control Multiple Personalities Multiple Personality Disorder Need For Control Out Of Hand Powerless Powerless Quotes Powerlessness Sybil

Denial is commonly found among persons with dissociative disorders. My favorite quotation from such a client is, We are not multiple, we made it all up. I have heard this from several different clients. When I hear it, I politely inquire, And who is we?

~ Alison Miller

Alison Miller Child Abuse Child Sexual Abuse Childhood Abuse Ddnos Denial Dissociation Dissociative Disorders Dissociative Identity Disorder Multiple Personality Disorder Split Personality

Some people have the experience of being accused of lying when they do not think that they have lied. Circle a number to show what percentage of the time this happens to you.[question from the Dissociative Experiences Scale]

~ Frank W. Putnam

Frank W. Putnam Diagnosis Dissociative Dissociative Identity Disorder Liar Lying Multiple Personality Disorder Pathological Lying Stigma