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Multiple Personality Disorder Quotes

Browse 176 quotes about Multiple Personality Disorder.

Multiple Personality Disorder Quotes

“The story of Sybil is true, not fictional or fraudulent. One early commentator actually suggested that Sybil and Dr. Cornelia Wilbur, her treating psychiatrist, were a case of folie à deux, or shared psychosis (Victor, 1975). Having met Dr. Wilbur, listened to her presentations on multiple personality (now known as dissociative identity disorder), and read the many critiques and reviews of Sybil, I have concluded that Sybil was not iatrogenically created by Dr. Wilbur.”

“A problem is that Nathan documents Shirley Mason as suffering from a variety of symptoms of a complex dissociative disorder prior to her first contact with Dr. Wilbur, although Nathan denies the dissociative nature of these symptoms. The symptoms described as real by Debbie Nathan include fugue states; blank spells; spending hours playing with imaginary companions with names far beyond the age when this occurs in nontraumatized children; pretending to be “Vicky,” one of her “imaginary companions” at times; her mother calling her by the same names of alter personalities later identified in adult therapy; talking in a high, childish voice when she was no longer a child; numerous symptoms consistent with somatoform dissociation throughout her childhood and adulthood; going downtown to bars to drink with men and not remembering afterward; suddenly becoming comatose in public; and suddenly acting dramatically out of character. All of these symptoms were described to Debbie Nathan in interviews with people who knew Shirley Mason well. Thus, Debbie Nathan’s book actually inadvertently provides documentation of a range of psychological and physical symptoms that would be expected beginning in childhood for someone with a burgeoning dissociative disorder.”

“As a single case from half a century ago, Sybil Exposed cannot tell us anything about the reliability, validity, etiology, epidemiology, or typical treatment outcome of a mental disorder. Nathan’s alternative theory of pernicious anemia is implausible and supported by no corroborating evidence; Debbie Nathan advocates a hypothetical explanation of Shirley’s pre-1945 symptoms that is less evidence based than the trauma dissociation theory she rejects.”

“In 1973 Flora Schreiber wrote SYBIL, a case history of a person with DID. After Schreiber’s death in 1988 there have been several unsuccessful attempts to prove this case was a fraud. Some of these people, enflamed by the success of the book, have falsified and distorted documents in Flora Schreiber’s archives to prove their theories. Furthermore, some did not engage in logical thinking. If the three women in "SYBIL" were clever enough to dupe the whole world, would they would not be clever enough to destroy so-called incriminating documents which Flora Schreiber bequeathed to John Jay College? Some people, who never engaged in any research about DID, claim that there is no connection between child abuse and DID. Then they unwittingly contradict themselves by stating DID doesn’t even exist.”

“...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.2,10 A 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.”

“It is unlikely that one ANP will serve as a constant throughout the person's life. Your client is, therefore, likely to have others besides the ones you know, or several who you might think of as "the host". Adults with dissociative disorders often have several ANPs from earlier stages of life inside. They usually have the same name but are of different ages. Sometimes, there are several current ANPs, each of whom assumes she or he is the "real" person and is amnesiac for the existence of the others. Their current knowledge and experience may overlap, while their other characteristics differ somewhat. This makes them glide easily from one to the other, and the therapist can easily miss the switch. p22”

“It was early in my career, and I had been seeing Mary, a shy, lonely, and physically collapsed young woman, for about three months in weekly psychotherapy, dealing with the ravages of her terrible history of early abuse. One day I opened the door to my waiting room and saw her standing there provocatively, dressed in a miniskirt, her hair dyed flaming red, with a cup of coffee in one hand and a snarl on her face. “You must be Dr. van der Kolk,” she said. “My name is Jane, and I came to warn you not to believe any the lies that Mary has been telling you. Can I come in and tell you about her?” I was stunned but fortunately kept myself from confronting “Jane” and instead heard her out. Over the course of our session I met not only Jane but also a hurt little girl and an angry male adolescent. That was the beginning of a long and productive treatment.”

“Like many people trying to understand DID, Oprah wondered if the different personalities were the different facets of Kim coming to life. In other words, one of us is Angry Kim, one of us is Sad Kim or Happy Kim or Worried Kim, and so on, and we come to life when the body is in those moods. That's not how it works. We're not Mr Men - we can't (in most cases) be defined by a single characteristic. We're rounded human beings, with happy sides to our personalities, frivolous sides, angry sides, reflective sides. Oprah couldn't hide her surprise. 'Like a normal person?' she said. 'Yes,' I replied, 'because I consider myself to be normal.”

“Steve said he was glad that I trusted him to develop relationships with the other personalities. He knew that my acceptance of them was a sign of greater health, but he really liked me best and wanted to know when I'd be integrated—when the other personalities would be gone. "Look, Steve," I said, "whether you like it or not, all of the personalities are part of this entity. No personality is ever going to disappear." "What about Robin and Reagen? Little Joe?" he asked. "Those personalities were absorbed, not exiled. No one inside will ever disappear. We're all real. We all matter.”

“The Flock required only four or five hours of sleep a night. That a lot of time for work. And the amnesia that in the past had crippled us became an advantage. Our production multiplied because each personalfty could focus on a separate task. Jo, for example, worked for many hours researching and writing a paper, unaware of what else needed to be done. When I pushed Jo aside to fulfill my graduate-assistant duties, I didn't worry about the progress of the paper. When Jo came back to work, she picked up precisely where she had left off, with no concern about her "lost time". She had near-perfect recall of all that she experienced. This was augmented by her near-perfect amnesia for all the time that elapsed between her points of consciousness. Being a multiple apparently created more efficient use of my conscious and semiconscious mind. I didn't want to give up my greater productivity to become just like everyone else.”

“A few days later, I waited outside Dr. Brandenberg's door and realized that I was tired of excusing the medical community for "not knowing anything about multiples." MPD had been recognized as a disorder for at least a hundred years. It had been brought to the attention of the professional and public communities through Three Faces of Eve in the 1950s and again by Sybil in the 1970s. Literature related to the disorder had snowballed in the clinical journals. I could understand that not every mental-health professional had treated a case, but I couldn't accept that mental-health professionals knew so little about it. At the very least, the doctors had access to the journals that had provided Jo with her wealth of information on the topic.”

“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.”

“[T]he disorder currently known as dissociative identity disorder (where an individual has more than one distinct personality) was called multiple personality disorder in DSM-III-R. Even though the diagnosis ended in the words personality disorder, it was not classified as a personality disorder. It always has been and remains a clinical disorder to be coded on Axis I. To avoid confusion, the name of the disorder was changed in the DSM-IV. Now all mental disorders listed in the DSM-IV-TR that end in the words personality disorder, represent personality disorders and need to be coded on Axis II.”

“300.14* Hysterical neurosis, dissociative type* In the dissociative type, alterations may occur in the patient's state of consciousness or in his identity, to produce such symptoms as amnesia, somnambulism, fugue, and multiple personality.”

“My initial response on being told I suffered Dissociative Identity Disorder all those years earlier had been denial. I'd denied it to Rob Hale, I'd denied it to Valerie Sinason, to Evelyn Laine and John Morton. You could have lined up everyone from Lady Gaga to the Queen of Sheba and I'd have denied it to them as well. There was absolutely no way I shared my body with other personalities.”

“FLATOW: So you would - how would you treat a patient like Sybil if she showed up in your office BRAND: Well, first I would start with a very thorough assessment, using the current standardized measures that we have available to us that assess for the range of dissociative disorders but the whole range of other psychological disorders, too. I would need to know what I'm working with, and I'd be very careful and make my decisions slowly, based on data about what she has. And furthermore, with therapists who are well-trained in dissociative disorders, we do keep an eye open for suggestibility. But that research, too, is not anywhere near as strong as what the other two people in the interview are suggesting.It shows - for example, there's eight studies that have a total of 11 samples. In the three clinical samples that have looked at the correlation between dissociation and suggestibility, all three clinical samples found non-significant correlations. So it's just not as strong as what people think. That's a myth that's not backed up by science." Exploring Multiple Personalities In 'Sybil Exposed' October 21, 2011 by Ira Flatow”

“Our psyche is astonishingly fissile. The proof is our dreams where one psyche produces a whole cast of characters interacting with each other and trying to dominate each other. All dreams are examples of multiple personality disorder, with the dream characters serving as “alters” of the unconscious mind. When a person, during waking hours, cannot control their unconscious, their dream minds take over as a cast of alters and they are then diagnosed with dissociate identity disorder.”

“At cocktail parties, I played the part of a successful businessman's wife to perfection. I smiled, I made polite chit-chat, and I dressed the part. Denial and rationalization were two of my most effective tools in working my way through our social obligations. I believed that playing the roles of wife and mother were the least I could do to help support Tom's career. During the day, I was a puzzle with innumerable pieces. One piece made my family a nourishing breakfast. Another piece ferried the kids to school and to soccer practice. A third piece managed to trip to the grocery store. There was also a piece that wanted to sleep for eighteen hours a day and the piece that woke up shaking from yet another nightmare. And there was the piece that attended business functions and actually fooled people into thinking I might have something constructive to offer. I was a circus performer traversing the tightwire, and I could fall off into a vortex devoid of reality at any moment. There was, and had been for a very long time, an intense sense of despair. A self-deprecating voice inside told me I had no chance of getting better. I lived in an emotional black hole. p20-21, talking about dissociative identity disorder (formerly multiple personality disorder).”