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Dissociation Quotes

Browse 275 quotes about Dissociation.

Dissociation Quotes

“I thought if I could touch this place or feel it this brokenness inside me might start healing. Out here its like I'm someone else, I thought that maybe I could find myself if I could just come in I swear I'll leave. Won't take nothing but a memory from the house that built me.”

HealingIdentityMemoryFinding YourselfLyricsBrokennessDissociationLyrics In A SongFinding OneselfIdentity ConfusionLyrics Of The Heart
Book:Miranda Lambert - Revolution
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“Identity Confusion in Patients With DID We can locate the identity confusion characteristic of DID in the middle-to-upper range of severity. Identity confusion is a significant factor in DID, when an environment created and sustained by one personality conflicts with the expectations of another personality who is not prepared to function in this alternate environment.”

Dissociative Identity DisorderDissociationMultiple PersonalitiesAlter PersonalitiesDissociative PartsIdentity Confusion
Book:Handbook for the Assessment of Dissociation: A Clinical Guide
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“We must understand that those who experience abuse as children, and particularly those who experience incest, almost invariably suffer from a profound sense of guilt and shame that is not meliorated merely by unearthing memories or focusing on the content of traumatic material. It is not enough to just remember. Nor is achieving a sense of wholeness and peace necessarily accomplished by either placing blame on others or by forgiving those we perceive as having wronged us. It is achieved through understanding, acceptance, and reinvention of the self. At this point in time there are people who question the validity of the DID diagnosis. The fact is that DID has its own category in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders because, as with all psychiatric conditions, a portion of society experiences a cluster of recognizable symptoms that are not better accounted for by any other diagnosis.”

PsychologyAbuseMental HealthTraumaMental IllnessChild AbuseDissociative Identity DisorderDiagnosisDissociationChild Sexual AbuseMultiple Personality DisorderIncestPsychiatricMental Health StigmaDid
Book:First Person Plural: My Life as a Multiple
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“Those who are aware of their condition and experience themselves as "multiple" might refer to themselves as "we" rather than "I." I shall use the term "multiple" at times, in respect for their internal experience. It is important to point out, however, that I recognize that someone who is multiple is actually a single fragmented person rather than many people. On the outside, a multiple is probably not visibly different from anyone else. But that image is only an imitation: people who are multiple cannot think like the rest of us, and we cannot think like them. (In fact, since it is difficult for the multiple to understand how singletons think, some of them might think that is is you who are strange). Just as a singleton cannot become a multiple at will, a multiple cannot become a singleton until and unless the barriers between the parts of the self are removed. Those barriers were put up to enable the child to tolerate, and so survive, unavoidable abuse. p20 [Multiple: a person with dissociative identity disorder (DID) or DDNOS. Singleton: a person without DID or DDNOS, i.e with a single, unified personality]”

PsychologyPersonalityTherapyMultipleDissociative Identity DisorderDissociationPsychotherapyMultiplicityMultiple Personality DisorderMultiple PersonalitiesSplit PersonalityAlterMpdDidDdnosAlter PersonalityStructural DissociationApparently Normal PartApparently Normal Personality
Book:Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
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“The "apparently normal personality" - the alter you view as "the client" You should not assume that the adult who function in the world, or who presents to you, week after week, is the "real" person, and the other personalities are less real. The client who comes to therapy is not "the" person; there are other personalities to meet and work with. When DID was still officially called MPD, the "person" who lived life on the outside was known as the "host" personality, and the other parts were known as alters. These terms, unfortunately, implied that all the parts other than the host were guests, and therefore of less importance than the host. They were somehow secondary. The currently favored theory of structural dissociation (Nijenhuis & Den Boer, 2009; van der Hart, Nijenhuis, & Steele, 2006), which more accurately describes the way personality systems operate, instead distinguishes between two kinds of states: the apparently normal personality, or ANP, and the emotional personality, or EP, both of which could include a number of parts. p21”

PsychologyPersonalityTherapyDissociative Identity DisorderDissociationPsychotherapyMultiple Personality DisorderMultiple PersonalitiesSplit PersonalityAlterMpdDidAlter PersonalityStructural DissociationApparently Normal PartApparently Normal Personality
Book:Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
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“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.”

ConsciousnessPrejudiceMemoryMental IllnessMisunderstandingDissociative Identity DisorderDiagnosisForgetfulnessStigmaDissociationStereotypesAmnesiaMultiplicityMultiple Personality DisorderStates Of ConsciousnessMultiple PersonalitiesSwitchingAlter PersonalitiesMemory LossDissociative DisorderDissociative AmnesiaMpdMisdiagnosisFugueException To The RuleAltersDidDsmAmnesiacDiagnosingPersonality SystemDiagnostic CriteriaFugue StatePersonality SwitchDsm5
Book:Trauma, Dissociation and Multiplicity: Working on Identity and Selves
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“I honestly didn't believe I could bear any more suffering. I was convinced that the child within me was just too young to endure all this, much less understand it. She just wanted to be normal. But another part of me knew that to become normal, all the pieces of this puzzle had to become conscious. p164”

ConsciousnessAwarenessPersonalityPresenceDissociative Identity DisorderDissociationMultiplicityRitual AbuseSatanic Ritual AbuseDissociativeDerealizationMultiple Personality
Book:Wholeness: My Healing Journey from Ritual Abuse
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“When sleep came, I would dream bad dreams. Not the baby and the big man with a cigarette-lighter dream. Another dream. The castle dream. A little girl of about six who looks -like me, but isn’t me, is happy as she steps out of the car with her daddy. They enter the castle and go down the steps to the dungeon where people move like shadows in the glow of burning candles. There are carpets and funny pictures on the walls. Some of the people wear hoods and robes. Sometimes they chant in droning voices that make the little girl afraid. There are other children, some of them without any clothes on. There is an altar like the altar in nearby St Mildred’s Church. The children take turns lying on that altar so the people, mostly men, but a few women, can kiss and lick their private parts. The daddy holds the hand of the little girl tightly. She looks up at him and he smiles. The little girl likes going out with her daddy. I did want to tell Dr Purvis these dreams but I didn’t want her to think I was crazy, and so kept them to myself. The psychiatrist was wiser than I appreciated at the time; sixteen-year-olds imagine they are cleverer than they really are. Dr Purvis knew I had suffered psychological damage as a child, that’s why she kept making a fresh appointment week after week. But I was unable to give her the tools and clues to find out exactly what had happened.”

CrazyHorrorVictimCookingMental HealthTerrorPsychologicalTherapyTortureSurvivorSexual AbuseDissociative Identity DisorderDissociationMultiple Personality DisorderRitual AbuseDissociativeCastleTherapistPedophilesDerealizationPaedophile RingPsychotherapistOut Of Body
Book:Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind
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“Dissociative Disorders have a high rate of responsiveness to therapy and that with proper treatment, their prognosis is quite good.”

Mental IllnessTherapyDissociative Identity DisorderDissociationAbuse SurvivorsPsychotherapyMental DisorderTraumatizedDissociative DisorderDissociative AmnesiaDissociative DisordersMpdDepersonalizationDdnosPrognosisDerealizationDepersonalization DisorderDissociative Fugue
Book:Interviewer's Guide to the Structured Clinical Interview for Dsm-IV Dissociative Disorders
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“Denial returned, like a nagging cough you can never quite shake. Actually, it was always close at hand, and even though "satanic ritual abuse" did describe what had happened to me when I was a child. the concept was so foreign and so horrific that some part of me still wanted to stay in denial. Devil worship dominated my childhood. That was undeniable, even if it was still nearly impossible to contemplate. Both of my parents and any number of their friends, as well as "respected" members of our community, had worshipped Satan. I pushed the notion aside with all the power I could muster. I kept thinking to myself that it was ridiculous and impossible. p157”

ConsciousnessAwarenessPersonalityDevilDenialSatanChild AbusePresenceDissociative Identity DisorderDissociationMultiplicityHorrificRitual AbuseSatanic Ritual AbuseDissociativeDerealizationMultiple PersonalityDevil Worship
Book:Wholeness: My Healing Journey from Ritual Abuse
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“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.”

CookingMental HealthSurvivorSexual AbuseDissociative Identity DisorderUnrealDissociationMultiple Personality DisorderDissociativeDerealizationOut Of BodySpaced OutSpacey
Book:Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind
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“This new co-consciousness brought me to a state of awareness in which my core personality was directly able to experience "her" personality. Being co-conscious with her, he explained, would stop me from experiencing the feeling of leaving my body or dissociating.”

AwarenessPersonalityPresenceDissociative Identity DisorderDissociationMultiplicityRitual AbuseSatanic Ritual AbuseDissociativeDerealizationMultiple PersonalityConsciosness
Book:Wholeness: My Healing Journey from Ritual Abuse
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“Carla's description was typical of survivors of chronic childhood abuse. Almost always, they deny or minimize the abusive memories. They have to: it's too painful to believe that their parents would do such a thing. So they fragment the memories into hundreds of shards, leaving only acceptable traces in their conscious minds. Rationalizations like "my childhood was rough," "he only did it to me once or twice," and "it wasn't so bad" are common, masking the fact that the abuse was devastating and chronic. But while the knowledge, body sensations, and feelings are shattered, they are not forgotten. They intrude in unexpected ways: through panic attacks and insomnia, through dreams and artwork, through seemingly inexplicable compulsions, and through the shadowy dread of the abusive parent. They live just outside of consciousness like noisy neighbors who bang on the pipes and occasionally show up at the door.”

HealingAbuseMental HealthAddictionMental IllnessDenialSurvivorChild AbuseDreadSubconsciousPtsdAlcoholismInsomniaAvoidanceDissociationAbuse SurvivorsNightmaresSurvivorsIncestHealing InsightsFragmentedTraumatic ExperiencesChildhood AbuseConscious AwarenessRationalizationMental DisorderTraumatizedPanic AttacksDissociative DisorderAlcohol AddictionSelf ProtectionChild RapeDissociative AmnesiaHealing From AbuseMinimizingFlashbackAbusive ParentsHealing AbuseTrauma MemoryDefense MechanismFlashbacksParental AbuseEffects Of Child AbuseMinimizationDenial Of AbuseTrauma MemoriesDenial Of Child AbuseTraumatic MemoriesAbusive ParentIntrusiveSadistic AbuseDenial Of IncestIncestuousPsychological DefenceBad ChildhoodIrrational FearsAbusive ChildhoodIntrusionsMinimizing IssuesDissociated AmnesiaCompulsionsCompulsive EatingFear Of TruthBody MemoriesCompulsive BehaviorCompulsive OvereatingSeemingly Inexplicable BehaviorSex Addition
Book:The Couple Who Became Each Other: Stories of Healing and Transformation from a Leading Hypnotherapist
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“Although she had never tasted wine, it looked extremely refreshing; just what she needed to quench her thirst. And she hear his voice call out to her “come on Terry Jo! We're leaving now!“ Occasionally, a wave splashing into her face brought her into semi-consciousness. She was so numb now from shock, she felt even less fear. The confined world the raft and the water was beginning to become her way of life. The previous world of the Bluebelle, her family, and her home was becoming strangely distant and incomprehensible.”

DissociationHallucinationHearing VoicesShipwrecked
Author:Richard D. Logan
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“The observer self, a part of who we really are, is that part of us that is watching both our false self and our True Self. We might say that it even watches us when we watch. It is our Consciousness, it is the core experience of our Child Within. It thus cannot be watched—at least by anything or any being that we know of on this earth. It transcends our five senses, our co-dependent self and all other lower, though necessary parts, of us. Adult children may confuse their observer self with a kind of defense they may have used to avoid their Real Self and all of its feelings. One might call this defense “false observer self” since its awareness is clouded. It is unfocused as it “spaces” or “numbs out.” It denies and distorts our Child Within, and is often judgmental.”

HealingSelf HelpTraumaTherapyPtsdDissociationChild DevelopmentDisassociation
Book:Healing the Child Within: Discovery and Recovery for Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families
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“How can I put this? There's a king of gap between what I think is real and what's really real. I get this feeling like some kind of little something-or-other is there, somewhere inside me... like a burglar is in the house, hiding in a wardrobe... and it comes out every once in a while and messes up whatever order or logic I've established for myself. The way a magnet can make a machine go crazy.”

DepressionAnxietyDissociative Identity DisorderDissociationBorderline Personality DisorderBpd
Book:The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
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“The primary driver to pathological dissociation is attachment disorganization in early life: when that is followed by severe and repeated trauma, then a major disorder of structural dissociation is created (Lyons-Ruth, Dutra, Schuder, & Bianchi, 2006).”

Mental IllnessAttachmentDissociative Identity DisorderDissociationChildhood TraumaBorderline Personality DisorderDissociative DisordersStructural Dissociation
Book:Neurobiology and Treatment of Traumatic Dissociation: Towards an Embodied Self
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“Sadly, psychiatric training still includes far too little on the very serious psychiatric sequelae of childhood trauma, especially CSA [child sexual abuse]. There is inadequate recognition within mental health services of the prevalence and importance of Dissociative Disorders, sufferers of which are frequently misdiagnosed as Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), or, in the cases of DID, schizophrenia. This is to some extent understandable as some of the features of DID appear superficially to mimic those of schizophrenia and/or Borderline Personality Disorder.”

Mental HealthMental IllnessPsychiatryDissociationSchizophreniaSchizophrenicBorderline Personality DisorderTrauma SurvivorsDissociative DisordersChild Sexual Abuse SurvivorMisdiagnosisBpdDdnosMental Health ProfessionalsMental Health SystemDissociative SymptomsBorderline PersonalityMisdiagnosedMental Disordwr
Book:Attachment, Trauma and Multiplicity: Working with Dissociative Identity Disorder
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“We propose that BPD involves secondary structural dissociation. Consistent with this, Golynkina and Ryle (1999) found that patients with BPD encompassed a dissociative part of the personality that seems to represent an ANP (a coping ANP) and more than one EP (abuser rage, victim rage, passive victim, and zombie). Some patients with BPD have severe dissociative symptoms, and may actually border on DDNOS or DID. Our clinical observations suggest that dissociative parts in BPD patients have less emancipation and elaboration, and less distinct sense of self than in DDNOS or DID.”

DissociationMultiple PersonalitiesBorderline Personality DisorderBpdPersonality DisorderStructural DissociationApparently Normal PartAnpEmotional Part
Book:The Haunted Self: Structural Dissociation and the Treatment of Chronic Traumatization
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“My other client, whom I will call Teresa, thought Lorraine had MPD and hoped I could help her. Almost no one recognized this condition in those days. Lorraine was forty years old and had been in and out of psychiatric hospitals since she was thirteen. She had had various diagnoses, mainly severe depression, and she had made quite a few serious suicide attempts before I even met her. She had been given many courses of electric shock therapy, which would confuse her so much that she could not get together a coherent suicide plan for quite a while. Lorraine’s psychiatrist was initially opposed to my seeing her, as her friend Teresa had been stigmatized with the "borderline personality disorder" diagnosis when in hospital, so was seen as a bad influence on her. But after Lorraine spent a couple of months in hospital calling herself Susie and acting consistently like a child, he was humble enough to acknowledge that perhaps he could learn some new things, and someone else’s help might be a good idea.”

PsychiatryDissociative Identity DisorderDissociationMultiple Personality DisorderMental Health StigmaMental DisorderDissociative DisorderDissociativeBorderline Personality DisorderMisdiagnosisBpdMental Health ProfessionalsMental Health BiasMental Illness DiscriminationAlter PersonalityStigmatizedLabeling SomeoneEct
Book:Becoming Yourself: Overcoming Mind Control and Ritual Abuse
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“The SCID-D may be used to assess the nature and severity of dissociative symptoms in a variety of Axis I and II psychiatric disorders, including the Anxiety Disorders (such as Posttraumatic Stress Disorder [PTSD] and Acute Stress Disorder), Affective Disorders, Psychotic Disorders, Eating Disorders, and Personality Disorders. The SCID-D was developed to reduce variability in clinical diagnostic procedures and was designed for use with psychiatric patients as well as with nonpatients (community subjects or research subjects in primary care).”

Mental IllnessPtsdDissociative Identity DisorderEating DisordersDiagnosisDissociationAnxiety DisordersSchizophreniaMental DisorderDissociative DisorderBorderline Personality DisorderDissociative DisordersPosttraumatic Stress DisorderMisdiagnosisPersonality DisordersDdnosAcute Stress Disorder
Book:Interviewer's Guide to the Structured Clinical Interview for Dsm-IV Dissociative Disorders
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“As Mollie said to Dailey in the 1890s: "I am told that there are five other Mollie Fanchers, who together, make the whole of the one Mollie Fancher, known to the world; who they are and what they are I cannot tell or explain, I can only conjecture." Dailey described five distinct Mollies, each with a different name, each of whom he met (as did Aunt Susan and a family friend, George Sargent). According to Susan Crosby, the first additional personality appeared some three years after the after the nine-year trance, or around 1878. The dominant Mollie, the one who functioned most of the time and was known to everyone as Mollie Fancher, was designated Sunbeam (the names were devised by Sargent, as he met each of the personalities). The four other personalities came out only at night, after eleven, when Mollie would have her usual spasm and trance. The first to appear was always Idol, who shared Sunbeam's memories of childhood and adolescence but had no memory of the horsecar accident. Idol was very jealous of Sunbeam's accomplishments, and would sometimes unravel her embroidery or hide her work. Idol and Sunbeam wrote with different handwriting, and at times penned letters to each other. The next personality Sargent named Rosebud: "It was the sweetest little child's face," he described, "the voice and accent that of a little child." Rosebud said she was seven years old, and had Mollie's memories of early childhood: her first teacher's name, the streets on which she had lived, children's songs. She wrote with a child's handwriting, upper- and lowercase letters mixed. When Dailey questioned Rosebud about her mother, she answered that she was sick and had gone away, and that she did not know when she would be coming back. As to where she lived, she answered "Fulton Street," where the Fanchers had lived before moving to Gates Avenue. Pearl, the fourth personality, was evidently in her late teens. Sargent described her as very spiritual, sweet in expression, cultured and agreeable: "She remembers Professor West [principal of Brooklyn Heights Seminary], and her school days and friends up to about the sixteenth year in the life of Mollie Fancher. She pronounces her words with an accent peculiar to young ladies of about 1865." Ruby, the last Mollie, was vivacious, humorous, bright, witty. "She does everything with a dash," said Sargent. "What mystifies me about 'Ruby,' and distinguishes her from the others, is that she does not, in her conversations with me, go much into the life of Mollie Fancher. She has the air of knowing a good deal more than she tells.”

ScienceHistoryPsychologyMedicineDissociative Identity DisorderDissociationHysteriaAmnesiaMultiple Personality DisorderMultiple PersonalitiesSplit PersonalityPersonalitiesMpdConversion DisorderMollie FancherSpasm
Book:The Fasting Girl: A True Victorian Medical Mystery
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“When preparing for Book One, I talked to a couple of psychiatrists about psychosomatic phenomena, neuroses and dissociative conditions, for example the so—called hysterical blindness suffered by many who saw the Killing Fields in Pol Pot’s Cambodia: their eyes objectively see, but they are not aware of it and are blind because they believe they can’t see. One specialist told me that among modern Western people, ’metaphorical’ symptoms such as Fredy or those Cambodians evince are much rarer now than earlier in the twentieth century or before. Nowadays most people are better equipped by education to verbalise their neuroses, and have lots of jargon in which to do so. For most of the dissociative dimension, I could draw on things I knew from within myself.”

TraumaMental IllnessBlindnessDissociationNeurosisHysteriaTraumatic ExperiencesMental DisorderTraumatizedDissociativeTrauma SurvivorsTraumatic StressPsychosomaticConversion DisorderHysterical DissociationNeuroticismPol PotNeuorosesPsychogenic
Book:Fredy Neptune
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“The term dissociation is ordinarily used to describe the phenomenon of compartmentalization or fragmentation of mental contents. It does not ascribe any particular mechanism by which the dissociative process occurs. Does dissociation occur as a result of automatic, nonconscious processes, or are there other specific mechanisms by which it occurs? Especially in the context of describing amnesia, the term repression is widely used in connection with several different mechanisms. As it is commonly used, it often implies how individuals may block our memories of uncomfortable or conflictual experiences. If done consciously, the mechanism is more accurately called suppression, which results from actively trying not to think about negative experiences.”

PsychologyChild AbuseRapeRepressionDiagnosisDissociationChild Sexual AbuseAbuse SurvivorsPsychotherapySuppressionIncestDefinitionUnconscious MindTraumatizedFragmentationRepressed MemoriesDissociative AmnesiaDissociative DisordersChild Sexual Abuse SurvivorRecovered MemoriesChild Abuse DeniersTrauma MemoriesCompartmentalizationClergy AbuseRape SurvivorsDefence Mechanisms
Book:Rebuilding Shattered Lives: Treating Complex PTSD and Dissociative Disorders
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“Treating Abuse Today (Tat), 3(4), pp. 26-33 Freyd: I see what you're saying but people in psychology don't have a uniform agreement on this issue of the depth of -- I guess the term that was used at the conference was -- "robust repression." TAT: Well, Pamela, there's a whole lot of evidence that people dissociate traumatic things. What's interesting to me is how the concept of "dissociation" is side-stepped in favor of "repression." I don't think it's as much about repression as it is about traumatic amnesia and dissociation. That has been documented in a variety of trauma survivors. Army psychiatrists in the Second World War, for instance, documented that following battles, many soldiers had amnesia for the battles. Often, the memories wouldn't break through until much later when they were in psychotherapy. Freyd: But I think I mentioned Dr. Loren Pankratz. He is a psychologist who was studying veterans for post-traumatic stress in a Veterans Administration Hospital in Portland. They found some people who were admitted to Veteran's hospitals for postrraumatic stress in Vietnam who didn't serve in Vietnam. They found at least one patient who was being treated who wasn't even a veteran. Without external validation, we just can't know -- TAT: -- Well, we have external validation in some of our cases. Freyd: In this field you're going to find people who have all levels of belief, understanding, experience with the area of repression. As I said before it's not an area in which there's any kind of uniform agreement in the field. The full notion of repression has a meaning within a psychoanalytic framework and it's got a meaning to people in everyday use and everyday language. What there is evidence for is that any kind of memory is reconstructed and reinterpreted. It has not been shown to be anything else. Memories are reconstructed and reinterpreted from fragments. Some memories are true and some memories are confabulated and some are downright false. TAT: It is certainly possible for in offender to dissociate a memory. It's possible that some of the people who call you could have done or witnessed some of the things they've been accused of -- maybe in an alcoholic black-out or in a dissociative state -- and truly not remember. I think that's very possible. Freyd: I would say that virtually anything is possible. But when the stories include murdering babies and breeding babies and some of the rather bizarre things that come up, it's mighty puzzling. TAT: I've treated adults with dissociative disorders who were both victimized and victimizers. I've seen previously repressed memories of my clients' earlier sexual offenses coming back to them in therapy. You guys seem to be saying, be skeptical if the person claims to have forgotten previously, especially if it is about something horrible. Should we be equally skeptical if someone says "I'm remembering that I perpetrated and I didn't remember before. It's been repressed for years and now it's surfacing because of therapy." I ask you, should we have the same degree of skepticism for this type of delayed-memory that you have for the other kind? Freyd: Does that happen? TAT: Oh, yes. A lot.”

AbuseWorld War IiPtsdSexual AbuseRapeRepressionWorld War 2SoldiersDissociationPsychotherapyAmnesiaSexual AssaultSurvivorsRepressedIncestInterviewVictimsPseudoscienceAbusersPerpetratorsSociety DenialWorld War TwoVeteransChild RapePost Traumatic Stress DisorderRepressed MemoriesDissociative AmnesiaFalse MemoriesDissociative DisordersPedophiliaScamPosttraumatic Stress DisorderFalse MemoryRecovered MemoriesFalse Memory Syndrome FoundationFalse Memory SyndromeRepressed MemoryFmsfAbuse DeniersDenial Of AbusePseudo ScienceDenial Of Child AbuseForgotten MemoriesPost Traumatic StressTraumatic MemoriesPseudoscientificPerpetratorPamela FreydVictim PerpetratorsDenial Of IncestAnti ScienceConfabulationTraumatic AmnesiaDissociateDissociated AmnesiaDissociated StateSexual Offense
Author:David L. Calof
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“Dissociative identity disorder is conceptualized as a childhood onset, posttraumatic developmental disorder in which the child is unable to consolidate a unified sense of self. Detachment from emotional and physical pain during trauma can result in alterations in memory encoding and storage. In turn, this leads to fragmentation and compartmentalization of memory and impairments in retrieving memory.2,4,19 Exposure to early, usually repeated trauma results in the creation of discrete behavioral states that can persist and, over later development, become elaborated, ultimately developing into the alternate identities of dissociative identity disorder.”

TraumaMental IllnessChild AbuseDissociative Identity DisorderSense Of SelfEmotional PainDissociationPersonality DevelopmentTraumatizedAlter PersonalitiesMemory LossDissociativeCoping MechanismAbused ChildrenAltersDefense MechanismAlter IdentitiesCompartmentalizationAlter PersonalityPosttraumaticPosttraumatic StressAlter Identity
Author:Bethany L. Brand
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“When experiences or emotions become too overwhlming, the mind clevely encapsulates the material and stores it for safe-keeping. Many people respond this way in the face of trauma, but the additional step that occurs in this process, in the case of DID, is the formation of distinct ego states that carry the experience.”

TraumaPtsdDissociative Identity DisorderCopingDissociationTraumatic ExperiencesMultiple PersonalitiesTraumatizedAlter PersonalitiesDissociativeDissociative PartsCompartmentalizationMemory Fragmentation
Book:The Dissociative Identity Disorder Sourcebook
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“Working simultaneously, though seemingly without a conscience, was Dr. Ewen Cameron, whose base was a laboratory in Canada's McGill University, in Montreal. Since his death in 1967, the history of his work for both himself and the CIA has become known. He was interested in 'terminal' experiments and regularly received relatively small stipends (never more than $20,000) from the American CIA order to conduct his work. He explored electroshock in ways that offered such high risk of permanent brain damage that other researchers would not try them. He immersed subjects in sensory deprivation tanks for weeks at a time, though often claiming that they were immersed for only a matter of hours. He seemed to fancy himself a pure scientist, a man who would do anything to learn the outcome. The fact that some people died as a result of his research, while others went insane and still others, including the wife of a member of Canada's Parliament, had psychological problems for many years afterwards, was not a concern to the doctor or those who employed him. What mattered was that by the time Cheryl and Lynn Hersha were placed in the programme, the intelligence community had learned how to use electroshock techniques to control the mind. And so, like her sister, Lynn was strapped to a chair and wired for electric shock. The experience was different for Lynn, though the sexual component remained present to lesser degree...”

ConscienceAbuseMurderVictimMental HealthTraumaExperimentsMental IllnessPsychologicalTortureCanadaSurvivorChild AbuseSexual AbuseDissociative Identity DisorderDissociationChild Sexual AbuseMind ControlMultiple Personality DisorderIncestDissociativeSplit PersonalityMkultraElectric ShockExtreme AbuseBrain DamageHuman ExperimentsDoctors Who KillMcgillEwen CameronMedical ExperimentSexual TortureElectricutedMcgill UniversityWithout A Conscience
Book:Secret Weapons: How Two Sisters Were Brainwashed to Kill for Their Country
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“I suppose I became a ghost long before I died. Or maybe I was never born at all. Georgie Gust—my puppet, my echo, my alibi—he lives the life I never could. And Ben? Ben is the disease, the master puppeteer. Together we dance. Alone, we rot. It’s not schizophrenia, really—it’s an orchestra without a conductor. Some days I am all the instruments at once. Other days, I am silence. But always, always, the music aches.”

IdentitySurvivalTraumaMental IllnessEmotional PainDissociationSchizophreniaInner ConflictPsychological FictionAlter Ego
Book:Jonathan Harnisch: An Alibiography
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“Although it is important to be able to recognise and disclose symptom of physical illnesses or injury, you need to be more careful about revealing psychiatric symptoms. Unless you know that your doctor understands trauma symptoms, including dissociation, you are wise not to reveal too much. Too many medical professionals, including psychiatrists, believe that hearing voices is a sign of schizophrenia, that mood swings mean bipolar disorder which has to be medicated, and that depression requires electro-convulsive therapy if medication does not relieve it sufficiently. The “medical model” simply does not work for dissociation, and many treatments can do more harm than good... You do not have to tell someone everything just because he is she is a doctor. However, if you have a therapist, even a psychiatrist, who does understand, you need to encourage your parts to be honest with that person. Then you can get appropriate help.”

TrustDoctorsMental IllnessTherapyPsychiatryDissociative Identity DisorderDiagnosisStigmaMedicationDissociationBipolarSchizophreniaRitual AbuseDisclosureBipolar DisorderSatanic Ritual AbuseDissociative DisorderLack Of KnowledgeDissociative DisordersTherapistMisdiagnosisDdnosMood SwingsHearing VoicesOsddPsychotherapistMedical ModelPsychiatric DrugsBipolar Ptsd
Book:Becoming Yourself: Overcoming Mind Control and Ritual Abuse
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“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.”

Mental IllnessPsychiatryDissociative Identity DisorderDissociationMultiplicityStates Of ConsciousnessMental DisorderAlter PersonalitiesDissociative DisorderDissociative AmnesiaAltersDissociative IdentitiesAltered States Of ConcsciousnessAmnesiac
Author:David Yeung
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“I understood these things intellectually, the way I understand that the world is round or that gravity is a universal force. But it took me a long time to truly grasp what Dr. Summer had told me many times before: "To survive a violent childhood, you created aspects of your consciousness that held information about the violence away from you. That's why you remember it as if it happened to someone else. You have many ways of being you.”

Dissociative Identity DisorderDissociationMultiplicityAlter PersonalitiesDissociative DisorderDissociative Parts
Book:The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder
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“Over and over, I thought, I needed to separate into parts in my head. I needed to separate into parts in my head, but I couldn't make sense of this. They were just words that didn't come together into something meaningful. A thought came up, I chased it and was able to hold on to it long enough to ponder it: I could not know this or something bad would have happened.”

Dissociative Identity DisorderDissociationAlter PersonalitiesDissociative Parts
Book:The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder
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“So you really have the same conversations with two or or three people who look exactly like me?' She nodded. 'Don't you feel embarrassed repeating yourself like that?' 'Not at all,' Dr Laine said. 'Remember, I'm not saying the same thing three times to you. I'm saying it once to three different people.' That would take a while to sink in. At least it explained my history of people looking exasperated at work or school or even in shops when I sometimes asked questions. They'd obviously just gone through it with someone else who looked exactly like me!”

Mental HealthDissociative Identity DisorderDissociationMultiple PersonalitiesAlter PersonalitiesDissociative AmnesiaLosing Time
Book:All of Me
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“Why do I take a blade and slash my arms? Why do I drink myself into a stupor? Why do I swallow bottles of pills and end up in A&E having my stomach pumped? Am I seeking attention? Showing off? The pain of the cuts releases the mental pain of the memories, but the pain of healing lasts weeks. After every self-harming or overdosing incident I run the risk of being sectioned and returned to a psychiatric institution, a harrowing prospect I would not recommend to anyone. So, why do I do it? I don't. If I had power over the alters, I'd stop them. I don't have that power. When they are out, they're out. I experience blank spells and lose time, consciousness, dignity. If I, Alice Jamieson, wanted attention, I would have completed my PhD and started to climb the academic career ladder. Flaunting the label 'doctor' is more attention-grabbing that lying drained of hope in hospital with steri-strips up your arms and the vile taste of liquid charcoal absorbing the chemicals in your stomach. In most things we do, we anticipate some reward or payment. We study for status and to get better jobs; we work for money; our children are little mirrors of our social standing; the charity donation and trip to Oxfam make us feel good. Every kindness carries the potential gift of a responding kindness: you reap what you sow. There is no advantage in my harming myself; no reason for me to invent delusional memories of incest and ritual abuse. There is nothing to be gained in an A&E department.”

PainMemoriesHealingAttentionCuttingAbuseVictimMental HealthTraumaAlcoholMental IllnessPsychologicalSurvivorDissociative Identity DisorderDissociationMultiple Personality DisorderIncestSelf HarmRitual AbusePsychiatricAlter PersonalitiesDissociativeOverdoseSplit PersonalityAlcoholicEmergencySuicide AttemptAlters
Book:Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind
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“The return of the voices would end in a migraine that made my whole body throb. I could do nothing except lie in a blacked-out room waiting for the voices to get infected by the pains in my head and clear off. Knowing I was different with my OCD, anorexia and the voices that no one else seemed to hear made me feel isolated, disconnected. I took everything too seriously. I analysed things to death. I turned every word, and the intonation of every word over in my mind trying to decide exactly what it meant, whether there was a subtext or an implied criticism. I tried to recall the expressions on people’s faces, how those expressions changed, what they meant, whether what they said and the look on their faces matched and were therefore genuine or whether it was a sham, the kind word touched by irony or sarcasm, the smile that means pity. When people looked at me closely could they see the little girl in my head, being abused in those pornographic clips projected behind my eyes? That is what I would often be thinking and such thoughts ate away at the façade of self-confidence I was constantly raising and repairing. (describing dissociative identity disorder/mpd symptoms)”

DepressionAbuseMental HealthTraumaSelf ConfidenceSurvivorChild AbuseSexual AbuseDissociative Identity DisorderDissociationHeadacheAnorexiaDisconnectedMultiple Personality DisorderIncestAlter PersonalitiesVoicesDissociativeMigraineAltersAnorexicChild Sex AbuseInternal VoicesAnoreticPorongraphic
Book:Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind
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“Of course, I should have known the kids would pop out in the atmosphere of Roberta's office. That's what they do when Alice is under stress. They see a gap in the space-time continuum and slip through like beams of light through a prism changing form and direction. We had got into the habit in recent weeks of starting our sessions with that marble and stick game called Ker-Plunk, which Billy liked. There were times when I caught myself entering the office with a teddy that Samuel had taken from the toy cupboard outside. Roberta told me that on a couple of occasions I had shot her with the plastic gun and once, as Samuel, I had climbed down from the high-tech chairs, rolled into a ball in the corner and just cried. 'This is embarrassing,' I admitted. 'It doesn't have to be.' 'It doesn't have to be, but it is,' I said. The thing is. I never knew when the 'others' were going to come out. I only discovered that one had been out when I lost time or found myself in the midst of some wacky occupation — finger-painting like a five-year-old, cutting my arms, wandering from shops with unwanted, unpaid-for clutter. In her reserved way, Roberta described the kids as an elaborate defence mechanism. As a child, I had blocked out my memories in order not to dwell on anything painful or uncertain. Even as a teenager, I had allowed the bizarre and terrifying to seem normal because the alternative would have upset the fiction of my loving little nuclear family. I made a mental note to look up defence mechanisms, something we had touched on in psychology.”

PsychologyMental HealthMental IllnessTherapyEmbarrassmentDissociative Identity DisorderPsychologistStigmaDissociationMultiple Personality DisorderAlter PersonalitiesDissociativeSplit PersonalityTherapistAltersSelf Stigma
Book:Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind
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“I did well at the Department of Justice. Some of my parts were hard workers. My well-developed memory helped me remember people: their names and positions and what they said during meetings. Rather than making me seem checked out, my dissociation made me seem calm and collected. In fact, the general dissociative state I was always in helped me function very well. I collected information, interacted on a personal and professional level, and was quite adept at managing most tasks in my life from this superficially numb and calm place. Most people, including me, didn't notice. This way of being and interacting was really all I knew. From that mild dissociation, I quickly went into a deeper dissociative state if there was conflict around me, if someone expressed strong emotions, or if something unpredictable happened. Although these difficult situations triggered me, they brought out behavior that helped me do well when the going got tough.”

Dissociative Identity DisorderDissociationStereotypesMultiple Personality DisorderMultiple PersonalitiesAlter PersonalitiesDissociative DisordersSurvival Mechanism
Book:The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder
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“Children in our culture are familiar with transformation of identity from comics, movies, television, and books. Who has not watched a child zooming around on the sidewalk or in the backyard, pretending to be a superhero or some other figure? Who can doubt the child's intensity of imaginative involvement in this transformation? I think it is reasonable to say that the normal child partly believes in this transformation on a transient basis. It is not necessary to wonder where the MPD child gets the idea of creating someone else inside to cope with the abuse. The strategy of transformation of identity to gain strength, coping power, even and vulnerability is readily available in the child's environment.”

Child AbuseDissociationAlter PersonalitiesAltersAlter IdentitiesIdentity Alteration
Book:Dissociative Identity Disorder: Diagnosis, Clinical Features, and Treatment of Multiple Personality
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