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Identity Alteration Quotes

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Identity Alteration Quotes

“By contrast, moderate identity alteration differs from its milder countepart in that the alterations are not always under the person's control. In addition, moderate identity alteration does not always manifest the presence of distinct alter personalities. Someone who experiences moderate identity alteration may present with mood changes and behaviors that they perceive as uncontrollable. Patients with nondissociative psychiatric disorders (e.g., manic depressive illness) may report moderate alterations in behavior/demeanor that they cannot control; for example, one patient diagnosed as manic depressive mentioned being bothered by his inability to "keep his mind from racing" (SCID-D interview, unpublished transcript). However, these alterations do not coalesce around distinct personalities. Similarly, individuals who have borderline personality disorder tend to fluctuate rapidly between radically different behaviors and moods; however, these changes do not involve different names, memories, preferences, distinct ages, or amnesia for past events.”

Dissociative Identity DisorderBipolarBorderline Personality DisorderDissociative PartsDissociative StatesIdentity AlterationSelf States
Book:Handbook for the Assessment of Dissociation: A Clinical Guide
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“In some instances the patient will have a visual image of a contrasexual alter. For example, one female patient endorsed the presence of two male alters with the same name, one a boy of about age 10 wearing a baseball cap and the other a slightly older but still aggressive adolescent. Because a patient's use of visual images provides rich evidence for the degree of identity alteration, each of the SCID-D's follow-up sections incorporates questions about visual images to allow the patient to elaborate on this symptom.”

Dissociative Identity DisorderAlter PersonalitiesDissociative DisordersDissociative PartsDissociative SymptomsDissociative StatesIdentity AlterationVisual Image
Book:Handbook for the Assessment of Dissociation: A Clinical Guide
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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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“Weird? Absurd? That’s how it seemed to me. I had these forces, these compunctions, these alternative personalities inside me, driving me. It was like being a jack-in-the-box and I was unsure which personality was going to jump out next: Billy, who thought of himself as a cowboy or a terrorist; Kato the cutter; anorexic Shirley, whose only self-indulgence was binge drinking and the occasional salad sandwich. I didn’t dislike Shirley. I was afraid of her. Shirley knew things I didn’t.”

AbuseMental HealthTraumaSurvivorSexual AbuseDissociative Identity DisorderDissociationAnorexiaAmnesiaMultiple Personality DisorderIncestAlter PersonalitiesMemory LossDissociativePersonalitiesAltersIdentity AlterationSplit Personalities
Book:Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind
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“My reflection--- or Zelda's reflection--- stared back at me. Technically speaking, my body and my face were essentially the same as they'd always been. I still had the same smattering of freckles across the bridge of my nose, that same star-shaped birthmark just beneath my right ear that no amount of concealer--- or magic--- had ever been able to completely hide. I'd stopped dyeing my hair garish colors a few years back to let my natural auburn shine through, but my hair itself was the still the same wavy texture and thickness it had been in the seventeenth century and every decade since. Yet despite everything about me that had not changed, the person I used to be would hardly recognize the person staring back at her now.”

ReflectionImmortalWitchAestheticRedheadIdentity Alteration
Book:Road Trip With a Vampire
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“It’s hard to feel supported when you can’t tell people everything. People haven’t really got a clue what it’s like. It’s hard to trust anyone. It’s hard to believe people won’t let you down. I’m feeling like I want to cry. My body feels hollow. Empty. I don’t feel like I’m 17. I feel young. I’m not sure how old, maybe about 10 yrs. It’s hard to accept that I can’t get all the support I need from one person. From any person. It’s hard that no one can fully understand. It’s hard for me to admit that inside I feel a really lonely person. What do I need to do to take care of myself right now? Well I need to cuddle my teddies — it sounds silly, but I need some comfort... I was still cuddling teddies when I should have been cuddling boys. The sick imagery in my mind, rather than making me sexually active, had closed that door completely.”

AbuseMental HealthTraumaSurvivorChild AbuseSexual AbuseDissociative Identity DisorderDissociationChild Sexual AbuseMultiple Personality DisorderIncestDissociativeSplit PersonalityAlterAlter PersonalityIdentity Alteration
Book:Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind
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“Identity alteration is a more general term for the objective behaviors that are manifestations of the assumption of different identities (Steinberg, 1993). It includes not only behaving like a different person but also disremembered behaviors, finding possessions for which one cannot account, hearing voices and carrying on internal or written dialogues between dissociated ego states, spontaneous age regressions to traumatic events, and referring to oneself as "we." Overtly behaving as if one were a different person does not appear to be typical of the clinical presentation of DID...”

SymptomsDissociative Identity DisorderIdentity CrisisSwitchingDissociative DisorderDissociative SymptomsIdentity Alteration
Author:David H. Gleaves
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“Levels of identity alteration can run from absent to severe (see Figure 11-1 and Table 11-1). What differentiates the various degrees of severity are the distinctness and complexity of the personality states involved and the ability of these states to control a person's outward behavior. Mild identity alteration is widespread in the general population. Many, perhaps most, people are aware of occasions in their lives in which they have assumed different roles or demeanors but remained conscious of their role-switching or alteration, and perceived themselves having been in control of the transition.”

IdentityPersonalityIdentity AlterationDifferent RolesEho StatesRole Switchibg
Book:Handbook for the Assessment of Dissociation: A Clinical Guide
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“Peasant to princess to queen to empress. To spring from the first to the second was an act of God. To leap all four in a single year--- it was impossible. And yet here she was, living her impossible life, Briar Rose the peasant bard, Aurora the princess, some new furious woman the queen. What version of her would rise up once she became empress? How many different versions of one person could she hold within her body until she broke from the strain?”

Identity CrisisPrincess AuroraIdentity AlterationBriar Rose
Book:A Sword In Slumber
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