As a follow up to Plinboe's post Psychics and inability to admit being wrong I thought I would ouline a little theory that occured to me.
Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) first really came to the world’s attention with the book (1973) and the film (1976, starring Sally Field) Sybil. (It is now referred to as Dissociative Identity Disorder but for the purposes of this post I’ll call it MPD)
In a nutshell, MPD consists of a sufferer having “at least one alter personality that controls behaviour†(Skepdic). These ‘alters’ can be different ages, of either sex, wildly differing in personality and there can be up to thousands of them in a single individual. For most sufferers they cannot remember what their alters do and have large memory gaps.
The method of treatment for this disorder has consisted of hypnosis and trying to get the alters to talk to each other. The theory is that the alters represent different parts of the person’s whole psyche.
Furthermore the theory adds that in most of these cases the fragmentation of the person’s unity of consciousness is due to severe childhood sexual abuse that has been repressed and totally forgotten by the sufferer.
There are several reasons this disorder might be interesting to sceptics.
Firstly there is the debate about the disorder itself.
One of the leading critics of MPD Nicholas P. Spanos suggests that:
Most cases of MPD are “rule-governed social constructions established, legitimated and maintained through social interactionâ€.
He believes (as do several other leading psychologists) that the disorder is almost completely created and encouraged by the therapists.
For example Sybil (real name Shirley Ardell Mason) is now known to have had no MPD symptoms before her sessions with therapist Cornelia Wilbur.
The historian who first revealed her real identity says that there is strong evidence that the worst of the abuse described by the book could not have happened.
Wilbur used hypnosis and other suggestive techniques in her therapy.
Dr. Herbert Spiegel (who treated Sybil when Wilbur was absent) was shocked to discover that when he was in sessions with Sybil she would ask him if he would like her to assume certain alters. He said she could if she wanted but she didn’t have to and she said if it was okay she’d prefer not to. But she added that Dr Wilbur liked her to do so.
Spiegel also claims that Wilbur suggested the personalities herself and used hypnosis and sodium pentothal to help Sybil adopt them.
This treatment appears to typify the training that therapists have been getting to treat MPD. Encourage the suffers to express their alters and encourage the alters to talk. The idea is that if all the parts of the person’s shattered identity are talking then they will be able to reunify.
However this doesn’t seem to work.
Many of the sufferers have grown to really like the alters and actively don’t want them to reunuify as losing these alters would be like “a little part of themselves dyingâ€
Other problems:
There are very few reported cases of MPD afflicting children, despite the fact that this is when the alleged abuse happens.
Before the movie Sybil came out there had been 75 reported cases of MPD. Since the film – over 40,000.
The majority of sufferers tend to be of a highly suggestible personality type.
How come the person’s core personality can function perfectly normally when the alters are not present?
The founder of the International Society for the study of Dissociation (Dr Bennet Braun) had his licence suspended over allegations that, with the use of drugs and hypnosis he convinced a patient that she had killed scores of people (the quote from Sophia8’s sig come from this patient: “There was no way I could come from a little town in Iowa, be eating 2,000 people a year, and nobody said anythingâ€)
Now all this is interesting in its own right (and there was a fascinating documentary on it last Sunday in the UK).
But here’s what really struck me:
It is a disorder in which sufferers (often highly suggestible people) are encouraged to develop other personalities and make them talk.
They are encouraged to describe these other personalities in detail to an observer.
They have been trained through experience to receive positive feedback from the observers based on the complexity of the alters, the duration of talking as the alter, and the wide number of alters produced.
They show great unwillingness to get rid of any of these personalities.
They enjoy the process of the ‘therapy’ and enjoy the expression of their alters.
Many of the alters are very childlike and stubborn.
The alters can listen to each other and talk to each other and the core personality.
I was reminded strongly of mediums (i.e. those mediums who really appear to believe in what they are doing – obviously not the blatantly fraudulent ones who are another case entirely).
I believe that mediums and psychics may be exhibiting a variant of MPD in which the alters are replaced by voices of the dead.
Another interesting thing about the process is that, if we liken the medium to the MPD sufferer and the person getting the reading to the therapist, then we have a patient-therapist dynamic in which both parties might be highly suggestible.
The rules for their sessions are strongly outlined and known by both parties beforehand (popular culture makes us all aware of what we could expect from a visit to a medium, whether we have visited one or not).
In the whole the person getting the reading is easily satisfied by information provided and is pleased simply by the emergence of an alternate personality – it reinforces belief in the process for both parties.
This relates interestingly to Psychologist Nicholas P. Spanos’ description of MPD involving “rule-governed social constructions established, legitimated and maintained through social interactionâ€
Mediums, like MPD sufferers, are fiercely protective of their alternate personalities, refusing to admit error or be questioned in an aggressive or probing way.
Mediums often say things like “I wish I didn’t have this gift†much as MPD sufferers claim to want to be free of the ‘disorder’, yet there appears very little effort by either to actively restrain the development of the disorder/ability.
Also, 85% of MPD sufferers are female. I would be very interested to see how this correlates to the gender ratio of mediums (whenever I search the Internet any medium lists seem to show about a 4:1 - 80% - ratio of female to male, but that is a very rough estimate).
I don’t want to make this initial post too long so I’ll stop there for the moment and see what everyone else thinks.
Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) first really came to the world’s attention with the book (1973) and the film (1976, starring Sally Field) Sybil. (It is now referred to as Dissociative Identity Disorder but for the purposes of this post I’ll call it MPD)
In a nutshell, MPD consists of a sufferer having “at least one alter personality that controls behaviour†(Skepdic). These ‘alters’ can be different ages, of either sex, wildly differing in personality and there can be up to thousands of them in a single individual. For most sufferers they cannot remember what their alters do and have large memory gaps.
The method of treatment for this disorder has consisted of hypnosis and trying to get the alters to talk to each other. The theory is that the alters represent different parts of the person’s whole psyche.
Furthermore the theory adds that in most of these cases the fragmentation of the person’s unity of consciousness is due to severe childhood sexual abuse that has been repressed and totally forgotten by the sufferer.
There are several reasons this disorder might be interesting to sceptics.
Firstly there is the debate about the disorder itself.
One of the leading critics of MPD Nicholas P. Spanos suggests that:
Most cases of MPD are “rule-governed social constructions established, legitimated and maintained through social interactionâ€.
He believes (as do several other leading psychologists) that the disorder is almost completely created and encouraged by the therapists.
For example Sybil (real name Shirley Ardell Mason) is now known to have had no MPD symptoms before her sessions with therapist Cornelia Wilbur.
The historian who first revealed her real identity says that there is strong evidence that the worst of the abuse described by the book could not have happened.
Wilbur used hypnosis and other suggestive techniques in her therapy.
Dr. Herbert Spiegel (who treated Sybil when Wilbur was absent) was shocked to discover that when he was in sessions with Sybil she would ask him if he would like her to assume certain alters. He said she could if she wanted but she didn’t have to and she said if it was okay she’d prefer not to. But she added that Dr Wilbur liked her to do so.
Spiegel also claims that Wilbur suggested the personalities herself and used hypnosis and sodium pentothal to help Sybil adopt them.
This treatment appears to typify the training that therapists have been getting to treat MPD. Encourage the suffers to express their alters and encourage the alters to talk. The idea is that if all the parts of the person’s shattered identity are talking then they will be able to reunify.
However this doesn’t seem to work.
Many of the sufferers have grown to really like the alters and actively don’t want them to reunuify as losing these alters would be like “a little part of themselves dyingâ€
Other problems:
There are very few reported cases of MPD afflicting children, despite the fact that this is when the alleged abuse happens.
Before the movie Sybil came out there had been 75 reported cases of MPD. Since the film – over 40,000.
The majority of sufferers tend to be of a highly suggestible personality type.
How come the person’s core personality can function perfectly normally when the alters are not present?
The founder of the International Society for the study of Dissociation (Dr Bennet Braun) had his licence suspended over allegations that, with the use of drugs and hypnosis he convinced a patient that she had killed scores of people (the quote from Sophia8’s sig come from this patient: “There was no way I could come from a little town in Iowa, be eating 2,000 people a year, and nobody said anythingâ€)
Now all this is interesting in its own right (and there was a fascinating documentary on it last Sunday in the UK).
But here’s what really struck me:
It is a disorder in which sufferers (often highly suggestible people) are encouraged to develop other personalities and make them talk.
They are encouraged to describe these other personalities in detail to an observer.
They have been trained through experience to receive positive feedback from the observers based on the complexity of the alters, the duration of talking as the alter, and the wide number of alters produced.
They show great unwillingness to get rid of any of these personalities.
They enjoy the process of the ‘therapy’ and enjoy the expression of their alters.
Many of the alters are very childlike and stubborn.
The alters can listen to each other and talk to each other and the core personality.
I was reminded strongly of mediums (i.e. those mediums who really appear to believe in what they are doing – obviously not the blatantly fraudulent ones who are another case entirely).
I believe that mediums and psychics may be exhibiting a variant of MPD in which the alters are replaced by voices of the dead.
Another interesting thing about the process is that, if we liken the medium to the MPD sufferer and the person getting the reading to the therapist, then we have a patient-therapist dynamic in which both parties might be highly suggestible.
The rules for their sessions are strongly outlined and known by both parties beforehand (popular culture makes us all aware of what we could expect from a visit to a medium, whether we have visited one or not).
In the whole the person getting the reading is easily satisfied by information provided and is pleased simply by the emergence of an alternate personality – it reinforces belief in the process for both parties.
This relates interestingly to Psychologist Nicholas P. Spanos’ description of MPD involving “rule-governed social constructions established, legitimated and maintained through social interactionâ€
Mediums, like MPD sufferers, are fiercely protective of their alternate personalities, refusing to admit error or be questioned in an aggressive or probing way.
Mediums often say things like “I wish I didn’t have this gift†much as MPD sufferers claim to want to be free of the ‘disorder’, yet there appears very little effort by either to actively restrain the development of the disorder/ability.
Also, 85% of MPD sufferers are female. I would be very interested to see how this correlates to the gender ratio of mediums (whenever I search the Internet any medium lists seem to show about a 4:1 - 80% - ratio of female to male, but that is a very rough estimate).
I don’t want to make this initial post too long so I’ll stop there for the moment and see what everyone else thinks.
