Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) - Myths #1

This presentation is curated from the Internet fall of 2012 as to how people have used the term DID or Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD). There are questions as to "multiplicity being true or false in a good part, because of the often silly and ill-informed manner in which it is presented, which begs to speak stereotypical. My name is Ann Garvey and I AM a multiple and wish to present a different view. I believe it to be more truthful. If there are any questions please contact me at Aynetal3@aol.com. Thanks for viewing

Transcript

1. 01 “One Life To Live” Actress Ellen Holly Details Awful Treatment! elev8.com Viki Lord from “One Life to live” is not actually a multiple. ~Ann Garvey~
2. "The ABC soap, “One Life To Live” was a sizzling story about town matriarch Viki Lord’s and the many citizens." "From the start, the action in Llanview, Pa., has centered around newspaper publisher, university president, former mayor and sometime waitress and oft-married Viki Lord Riley Buchanan Buchanan Carpenter Davidson Banks, the rock of the town despite her multiple personality disorder" (elev8 Staff, Jan 13, 2012). http://newsdidmpd.blogspot.com http://annsmultipleworldofpersonality.blogspot.com
3. 02 MARY READY: On having multiple personality disorder www.thedestinlog.com Having many self-facets is not the same as being a multiple. ~Ann Garvey~
4. "I wish I could state that definitively who I am. Maybe you can’t either, or you think you’d just confuse other people if you tried to explain yourself. I’ll tell you about my multiple personalities, and perhaps you’ll feel better if you’re an odd duck like me" (Mary Ready, January 13, 2012). http://newsdidmpd.blogspot.com http://annsmultipleworldofpersonality.blogspot.com
5. 03 Review: 'Within the Flames' by Marjorie M. Liu books.usatoday.com Lyssa’s Dragon and her surfacing to speak with Eddie is NOT like having DID nor should DID be associated with the “dark underbelly of society" including violence and grisly kill scenes. ~Ann Garvey~
6. "An extraordinary scene depicts Lyssa's dragon surfacing and speaking with Eddie. It is like a dissociative identity disorder: Lyssa exists with a separate distinct being inside." "Like Eddie, Lyssa lives with grief because of personal loss, and she is terrified of her power. Lyssa also has pyrokinetic abilities, but there is far more to this heroine's story" (USA TODAY Books, January 13, 2012). http://newsdidmpd.blogspot.com http://annsmultipleworldofpersonality.blogspot.com
7. 04 Gazette.Net: Comedy is a wacky woodland trip down memory lane www.gazette.net People who are multiple are not necessarily paranoid, though it can happen in DIDers and non-DIDers alike. ~Ann Garvey~ "Every morning when Claire wakes up, she has no clue who she is, where she is or who she can trust. So when a man jumps out from under her bed to tell her that the people who claim to be her family are really trying to kill her, she has no choice but to believe him." "Communication is difficult for the characters in the show, because many
8. of them also suffer from some sort of abnormality or disability. In addition to Claire’s memory loss, several characters also battle lisps, limps, slurred speech and multiple personality disorder" (Cody Calamaio, May 31, 2012). http://newsdidmpd.blogspot.com http://annsmultipleworldofpersonality.blogspot.com
9. 05 My friend's sister made this: Multiple personality disorder. - Imgur imgur.com There is NOT a multiple personality gland. Please don't feel sorry for having multiplicity feel sorry that there are people causing it primarily through sexual abuse before the age of five ~Ann Garvey~ "My friend's sister made this: Multiple personality disorder." "It's called Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) today. Cute photo, though."
10. "Your multiple personality gland is going haywire." "This is really a serious disorder. I feel bad for anyone who really has it" (imgur, May 31, 2012). http://newsdidmpd.blogspot.com http://annsmultipleworldofpersonality.blogspot.com
11. 06 Daniel Molokele: A Case of Multiple Personality Disorder! danielmolokele.blogspot.com
12. Political or governmental leaders who “switch their minds,” or their "politics" are not multiples because they had a change of heart – though anyone could be a multiple. And, "Maniac" Depression? I believe that is either "manic," or "bipolar." ~Ann Garvey~ "The danger being those we have elected as leaders, now masquerading as paragons of virtue and fountains of knowledge, are MPDs - where there "...is the presence of two or more distinct identities or personality states...that recurrently take control of behaviour" [Wikipedia]." "I am no psychologist, but enjoy objectively analysing extreme human behaviour. An obsession with bestsellers recently led me to legendary novelist Sydney Sheldon’s Tell Me Your Dreams where serial murderer Ashley Patterson exhibits symptoms of Multiple Personality Disorder [MPD]." "Myth has it that ‘too intelligent’ people sometimes show signs of coherent insanity – eventually dying prematurely of drug-induced stress or maniac depression!" "But if I ‘deserted’ from the camps to be a student activist, became a doctoral candidate, college lecturer, democracy activist, divorcee, NGO fraud suspect, ‘multiple’ party member, musician, praise singer and anti-libertarian – all in one lifetime – they’d better urgently seek MPD therapy!" "After 32 years of post-independence tyranny, we Zimbabweans whose
13. behaviour is guided by a universal moral compass must use our single alters to vote misguided nationalists and banish them from power. There are those genuinely afflicted with MPD. They deserve our sympathy. But in 2013, the little freedom that we have must be used as an instrument of exorcism" (Rejoice Ngwenya. May 31, 2012). http://newsdidmpd.blogspot.com http://annsmultipleworldofpersonality.blogspot.com
14. 07 Sydney Sheldon’s Tell Me Your Dreams www.epinions.com Sydney Sheldon’s, "Tell Me Your Dreams" FICTIONAL character, Ashley Patterson, is just pretending to be a multiple who is a serial killer – this is not based in reality, nor does it mean multiples are serial killers. ~Ann Garvey~
15. "Then Ashley attends her ten year reunion, she learns that Jim was viciously murdered and castrated the morning they were supposed to meet. She is stunned and immediately suspects her father. When a man at work who has been bothering her meets the same fate after she complains to her father about him, Ashley is convinced that her father is behind these murders." "On a business trip to Canada, Toni meets her Internet boyfriend for the first time. He presents her with a beautiful emerald ring and is then murdered and castrated. Alette’s artist boyfriend back home in California is also killed in this same fashion. Upon returning home, Ashley finds on her bathroom mirror the message “You will die.” "The deputy assigned to protect her is found the next morning in the alley, dead and castrated. When the emerald ring given to Toni is found in Ashley’s jewelry box and her fingerprints and DNA at each murder scene, she is arrested." "At this point, we are a little less than half way through the book. If you haven’t guessed from the review (I had already guessed from the novel), Ashley suffers from MPD (Multiple Personality Disorder). Toni and Alette are both alters which had been created by a traumatic experience (when Ashley was six and eight years old)" (Epinions, January 23, 2002). http://newsdidmpd.blogspot.com
16. 08 The hoax cases of Multiple Personality Disorder - Psychology - Fanpop www.fanpop.com If you are a multiple, then you just are … it’s not a game of pretend, a hoax or a plea for your sympathy. Being a multiple is not an immoral attempt at pretending to have a serious “real” illness, nor it is it an evil plot to lure you into believing something impossible for your mind to grasp. ~Ann Garvey~ "I can somehow understand if a person for some reason likes to pretend she or he has that condition, and of course that would mean there's something else seriously wrong with the person. But why do other people agree to waste money and time on documenting such hoax cases, as in to take part in them?"
17. "A blond woman in the Australian tv-series "The Extraordinary": - They say she's been diagnosed to have 68 personalities." "Here's my main problem with this scenario. This is supposed to be multiple personalities of one person, as in all personalities working the same brain in the same body. The body that has a damaged tissue causing blindness. There is NO way a psychological condition can fix a physical damage. It would be physically impossible for any personality to see better than another." "In this case the personality that supposedly has taken over the woman's core personality did not know anything but just guessed it must have been something extreme in her childhood that she could not cope with. In order to give at least a little credibility they should offer case-sensitive details." ("Is this kind of a documentary some kind of a new "art" form or simply an immoral attempt to pretend on real serious illnesses and evil, just to see how many believe it?" Bendaimmortal, May 31, 2012) http://newsdidmpd.blogspot.com http://annsmultipleworldofpersonality.blogspot.com
18. 09 Neurowiki 2012 & a New book on DID www.psychforums.com It would be nice to put a number on it, but in reality no one knows for sure how widespread multiplicity is. ~Ann Garvey~
19. "I was looking on Amazon and saw a new book on DID is about to come out so I looked up the author and found a wiki page. I have not heard of this author before. Does anyone know anything? Searching I found a neurowiki - which I am going to read in a bit." http://www.amazon.com/dp/178049033X/?tag=bfftlbr-20 "Understanding and Treating Dissociative Identity Disorder: Or Multiple Personality Disorder [Paperback]Jo Ringrose (Author)" "Dissociative identity disorder (DID) manifests in 1-5% of psychiatric patients, many of whom have never had former dissociative disorder diagnosis" "I wonder how much of the population that covers?" (Neurowiki, May 29, 2012). http://newsdidmpd.blogspot.com http://annsmultipleworldofpersonality.blogspot.com
20. 10 Multiple Personality Disorder - Zane : Songs, Reviews www.allmusic.com Because “Zane” wears two different hats of being both a rapper and a being in a rap-metal groove, it does not make him a multiple. ~Ann Garvey~ "Multiple Personality Disorder is an appropriate title for this CD because it finds Los Angeles resident Zane wearing two different hats. One minute,
21. he's a hardcore West Coast rapper whose influences range from Eazy-E and DJ Quik to Cypress Hill and House of Pain." "But the next minute, he has no problem turning around and getting into a rap-metal groove a la Rage Against the Machine or Limp Bizkit. And the rapper/singer is equally convincing in both areas; Multiple Personality Disorder never sounds forced or contrived, and Zane comes across as someone who really does hold hardcore rap and rap-metal in equally high regard." (Alex Henderson, May 31, 2012). http://newsdidmpd.blogspot.com http://annsmultipleworldofpersonality.blogspot.com
22. 11 The Most Emotionally Damaged Family Sitcom Characters bit.ly The “Full House” character of Michelle – was not really a multiple when she played a scene ACTING like a multiple. ~Ann Garvey~
23. “Full House” would have you believe that walking cautionary tale Kathy Santoni was the messed up one, what with its frequent use of slut shaming the poor, rarely seen side character (she was the first to get boobs, then got pregnant and married in high school, not to mention that time she stole Jonathan Brandis away from DJ, that harlot) but the Tanner family was basically just one disaster after another." "DJ had an eating disorder for one episode. Michelle developed some manner of dissociative identity disorder following a bout of horse-induced amnesia." (Courtney Enlow, May 31, 2012). http://newsdidmpd.blogspot.com http://annsmultipleworldofpersonality.blogspot.com
24. 12 The Angry Medic: Schizophrenia Jokes angrymedic.blogspot.com Schizophrenia and Multiplicity are two very distinct diagnosis and do not need further misalignment in popular culture. Jokes on multiplicity are not real – just someone abusing the diagnosis to poke “fun” at something they don’t understand. I think it somehow makes them feel “smart.” ~Ann Garvey~
25. "Let me preface this post with this warning: My life sucks nowadays. I wake up in the morning thinking "oh God not another new day". I go to sleep thinking "Yay, six whole hours of no one screwing with me". But I put on a happy face for my patients and a snarky face for my Twitter followers. Which leaves this blog as pretty much the only place I can really be myself. And today's one of those days when the whole weight of how much my life sucks is really pounding me in the face." "I'm schizophrenic and so am I. National Schizophrenic's Convention: Anybody who's everybody will be there! If a schizophrenic threatens suicide, is it declared a hostage situation?" "I may be schizophrenic but at least I have each other. Paranoid schizophrenic: Are you staring at us?" "So schizophrenia has always been portrayed as multiple personality disorder in the mass media, even though every medical student in diapers knows that's not the case. And I certainly am not above cracking the same jokes to make people smile." "However, as a supposed psychiatrist YOU should know that it is a common misconception that schizophrenia and MPD are the same thing, and jokes to that effect are so common they have become part of popular culture. So if you want to correct me, go shove your judgment up the arse of every single clown out there who has ever cracked one of 'em. Start by Googling 'schizophrenia jokes'. The first page itself will give YOU voices in your head."
26. (The Angry Medic, May 31, 2012). http://newsdidmpd.blogspot.com http://annsmultipleworldofpersonality.blogspot.com
27. 13 Dissociative Identity Disorder as by Bloodlines gamerdame.wordpress.com Being a multiple and being a vampire – such as in, "Vampire: The Masquerade," only multiplicity is real. "Bloodlines" is not real, it is a hoax and fictionalizes its characters theatrically as being multiples. ~Ann Garvey~ "This weekend I made some progress on Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines. Probably the most famous character from that game — given that she’s on the boxart — is Jeanette Voerman, everyone’s favorite Malkavian. Jeanette & Therese are the most interesting characters in the game, in my opinion."
28. "For those who have played the game, or don’t care about me spoiling it, you’ll know that Jeanette & Therese are in fact the same person. Voerman (as I will refer to them as a combined individual) has a split personality, officially known as Dissociative Identity Disorder, formerly Multiple Personality Disorder." "I, however, disagree with this. I don’t think Jeanette ever existed on her own as a person. She was always a creation of Therese’s mind. It fits with the profile of Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)." (GamerDame, August 13, 2012). http://newsdidmpd.blogspot.com http://annsmultipleworldofpersonality.blogspot.com
29. 14 Psych Gripe: Multiple Personalities and Responsibility psychgripe.blogspot.com Being a multiple is not “bizarre,” “exotic,” “weird,” “psychopathic,” “crazy,” or created from human imagination, nor is it in any means “convenient” in avoiding other negative consequences of taking responsibility. ~Ann Garvey~ "Multiple Personalities, now known as Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), is the single most controversial diagnosis in the diagnostic manual. Most would agree with that statement I think." "One of the most bizarre aspects of this diagnosis and its promoters is the
30. wish to have their cake and eat it too." "DID patients, therapists and promoters seem to have a problem with responsibility. Basically they can disavow responsibility for anything with negative consequences for the patient/client/consumer but otherwise expect the world to treat the DID patient as a completely competent and responsible citizen. Does that sound just a little too convenient?" (Bitter Pill, August 13, 2012). http://newsdidmpd.blogspot.com http://annsmultipleworldofpersonality.blogspot.com
31. 15 Dispatch From the Memory War | Psychology Today www.psychologytoday.com Elizabeth Loftus is not objective when talking about multiplicity – she comes with only one perspective – that of not believing in multiplicity. ~Ann Garvey~
32. "The most recent burst of gunfire was sent in my direction, though its real target was Elizabeth Loftus, the eminent University of Washington psychologist whom I profiled in the January/February 1996 issue. Her work is dedicated to demonstrating the inherent malleability of memory, its distortions, its suggestibility. She has testified on just that point as an expert witness in some infamous trials of the 80s and 90s. It turns out that's a dangerous line of work, for it flies in the face of the recovered memory movement, which has allied itself with feminism and child abuse." "Lately they've began trying to destroy her reputation, actually filing ethics complaints alleging scientific misconduct, threatening to sue an organization that is bringing her to speak, and using a few sentences from my article to try and censure her publicly." "By a most bizarre coincidence, two women at opposite ends of the country filed formal complaints against Loftus within weeks of each other, just before she resigned." (Psychology Today Staff, June 19, 2012) http://newsdidmpd.blogspot.com http://annsmultipleworldofpersonality.blogspot.com
33. 16 Gods, Selves, and Schizophrenic Brains www.huffingtonpost.com Identities and personas are psychological structures and constructs used by psychiatrists, psychologists, theorists, etc. to explain phenomena of the brain. They are pulling this information from learned and most often collaborated studies over time - they are not "simply" pulling from human imagination. ~Ann Garvey~
34. "Cases like Hans' seem to hint at a rather exotic idea: Perhaps more than one "person" or "personality" (whatever that means, exactly) can inhabit the same brain. That's certainly what bestselling authors like Flora Rheta Schreiber and Daniel Keyes insisted when they wrote their "true-life" accounts of patients with multiple personality disorder." "The problem is that that disorder has proven to be too controversial for comfort" "Certain regions of the cerebral cortex help those processes feel like parts of a unified whole, in both physical and conceptual terms, but "identities" and "personas" are both likely to be products of the human imagination." (Ben Thomas, August 13, 2012) http://newsdidmpd.blogspot.com http://annsmultipleworldofpersonality.blogspot.com
35. 17 Multiple Personalities with different eyesight? xenophilius.wordpress.com People with multiplicity are not possessed by various spirits or personalities. ~Ann Garvey~ "… One of the most baffling mysteries of multiple personality disorder is how alternate personalities can sometimes show very different biological characteristics from the host and from each other."
36. There’s no mystery. The body is just a vehicle for the mind/spirit/soul to experience this density of what we call physical reality. "David Icke calls the body a genetic spacesuit, since we need to wear our bodies in exactly the same way and for the same reasons." "If a person has allowed or has been possessed by various spirits or personalities, they will perceive reality differently even though the same sensory organs." (Xeno, August 3, 2012). http://newsdidmpd.blogspot.com http://annsmultipleworldofpersonality.blogspot.com
37. 18 Stephen King’s ‘Dark Towers’ To Bring Multiple Personality to Big Screen bit.ly Susannah Dean from Dark Tower – Nexus of all Universes” is a fictional character and does not exist in reality, she is not an accurate portrayal although she does suffer from misaligning the general public. ~Ann Garvey~ "As Roland follows his quest to locate the legendary Dark Tower (which is the “nexus of all universes,” in case you were wondering), he is accompanied by a posse of colorful characters, including Susannah Dean
38. – a wheelchair bound black woman from the 1960s who suffers from dissociative identity disorder, more commonly known as multiple personality disorder." "Susannah’s two personalities—the benign Odetta and violent Detta—were apparently born after a tragic childhood encounter with a serial killer that also left her physically impaired. While it is true that “DID (dissociative identity disorder) typically develops in childhood as a result of severe and sustained trauma,” (PsychCentral) it remains to be seen if the fantastical nature of this trilogy will lend itself to an accurate portrayal of an individual with this particular illness." "Perhaps an epic, cross-genre work of fiction isn’t where audiences will find their inaccuracies about DID dispelled, but deconstructing the character of Susannah Dean and seeing where she lines up with (and departs from) an actual individual with the disorder will be interesting to say the least." (Gayle, August 6, 2012). http://newsdidmpd.blogspot.com http://annsmultipleworldofpersonality.blogspot.com
39. 19 Canine Multiple Personality Disorder www.dogsey.com Dogs that alter their behavior under stress are not multiples. ~Ann Garvey~ "Canine Multiple Personality Disorder"
40. "I'm not sure why you think the dog has a personality disorder" "You may think his personality is changing from minute to minute but it may be that he is able to tolerate so much, and then the stresses overwhelm him." (krlyr, August 8, 2012). http://newsdidmpd.blogspot.com http://annsmultipleworldofpersonality.blogspot.com
41. 20 Multiple Personality Disorder M-FM www.sc2mafia.com Multiplicity is not caused by patients weak fortitude under duress due to over-medication. Patients with multiplicity do not wander psych halls at night to strangle others with stethoscopes and IV drips. ~Ann Garvey~ "Theme: You are a patient at Serenity Village, a psychiatric ward for the mentally disturbed. Due to a mistake in the daily medication distribution, many of the patients with weak mental fortitude have developed multiple personality disorder." "Some of these personalities are destructive and cause patients to wander
42. the halls at night strangling others with stethoscopes and IV drips." "Other personalities are of superheroes fighting for justice. Each anonymous M-FM account will be wielded by TWO forum users except for the Godfather (his scheming and plotting has kept him “sane”) and the Mayor (wrongly committed due to bad lawyers and an insanity plea for a crime he did not commit)." (Clementine, August, 2012). http://newsdidmpd.blogspot.com http://annsmultipleworldofpersonality.blogspot.com