Ralph Allison and the "trauma before the age of 7" urban legend

[lb_lee]

Rogan/Mori: So, way back in the tumblr days, I would see this multi urban legend that you could only become multi if you'd been traumatized before the age of... well, the exact age would change depending on legend iteration, apparently nine was the magic number I saw in 2011, but I feel like seven was another. I could not for the life of me figure out where this stupid idea CAME from, and it drove me crazy!

Well, surprise, but while digging around doing etymological research (i.e., digging in Ralph Allison's published papers), I might've found a source of the urban legend: Allison's "Critical Issues: MPD & DID Should Be Used For Two Separate Groups of Dissociators" CANDID (California News of Dissociation and Identity Disorder), 3(3):4, 1995. (And apparently I even knew about this back in 2011 when I first blogged about this stupid urban legend, but I didn't dig deeper or put two and two together.) This paper is worth discussing, just because... well, it's crackpot as hell, and a nice example of why you shouldn't believe everything a therapist tells you, no matter how famous or (once) well-respected they are (or were).

So, in 1994, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, (AKA the DSM, AKA the little tin bible of what counts as mental illness in the USA) was having its fourth edition coming out, the DSM-IV. Now, the previous edition (the DSM-III) had the diagnosis of Multiple Personality Disorder, but with the new edition came the creation of Dissociative Identity Disorder. The name change caused quite the upheaval in USA medical multi circles at the time as people had their identity kicked out from under them. If you'd hung your identity on the peg of MPD, a diagnosis that no longer existed, what did that make you? Other people happily switched to DID as a "less flamboyant" diagnosis, hoping it would let them dodge MPD's controversy. (This failed. To paraphrase Ann Richards, a hog in lipstick and earrings is still a pig.)

Ralph Allison decided (and as far as I know, he is the only one who did) that MPD and DID were two completely different conditions and that "The key item of differentiation is the age when the patient first suffered sufficient trauma to dissociate. If the first dissociation was before the age of seven, a condition that should be called MPD will be created. If the first dissociation occurred after the seventh birthday, a condition that should be called DID will be created." Why seven? Because "Child development specialists have long considered that it takes an average of seven years for any child to develop the personality that will be theirs for life. The personality of a child less than seven is too fragile to absorb life threatening trauma without reacting in some fashion."

I would argue that life-threatening trauma, by its very definition, is too much to be absorbed unflinching, regardless whether one is a small child or a grown adult, and he doesn't cite any sources for this, but fine, whatever. (Also, please enjoy the mental image of an eight-year-old whose personality is so powerful and stoic that it just waltzes through a torture zone completely unscathed.)

"Obviously not all children react to early trauma by dissociating, but those who do develop psychological entities which are different than those created at an older age. Obviously, I am not pointing to the seventh birthday as a magic moment when all is solid, and the moment before all was liquid." Oh, Ralph Allison, if only you knew how dogmatic people would be about this on tumblr fifteen years later!

Though it galls me to admit it, I have to concede dude has something of a point. He argues that "The trauma to the younger child [...] most likely will have occurred in the parental home setting. [...] However, if the patient came from a reasonably healthy family and then went out into the cruel world around him/her, that usually happened after the age of seven. Then the abuse most likely was caused by some member of the extended family or someone in the community. [...] then the results are far different." Much as I hate to agree with Ralph Allison about anything, and much as I hate the focus on age rather than the nature of the trauma involved, I don't think he's completely off-base here. I do think that there's a difference between people who experience violence outside their home/core family unit and those who experience it inside. We know people who found COVID's indoors mandate comparatively soothing and sanity-boosting ("I'm here, with my family and my stuff where it's safe! Whew!"), while for us, being trapped indoors is an express ticket to hell ("I need to get out I need to get out I need to get out").

But then Allison boards his bus to Crackville and any agreement I have with him is lost.

There's a thing that happens in all fields, where someone who's spent too long and too deep (and maybe gets believed a little too much) gets too convinced of their own theories. (We are no exception to this rule. Everyone is prone to it. This is why you shouldn't worship us either.) We see patterns that aren't really there, and we shove everything into those patterns, and maybe sometimes we're even right but then we become convinced that it becomes the One True Way, and then we become kookbats like Ralph Allison saying crap like this:

"In the younger group, which I call MPD multiples, the first entity to dissociate from the Birth Personality (BP) is the Inner Self Helper (ISH). The 'Mind' that is left I shall call the Original Personality (OP). The ISH is then the creator of all subsequent alter-personalities, no matter what type. [...] Prior to this first dissociation, that which becomes the ISH has been the 'charge's' source of inspiration, the 'still small voice within' which I prefer to call the Essence of the patient. The ISH role is only a temporary 'job assignment' for the Essence, which desires to return to an original state of unity within the multiple's mind."

You see what I mean? The ISH is probably Allison's most lasting contribution to multi culture, and his definition of it changed over time, but could be summed up as, "the headmate who embodies the Higher Self, who knows everything and is helpful to the therapist and never gets angry or has any disagreeable habits." Plenty of multis, including those with MPD, don't have one. We don't, and the only reason we don't have that diagnosis is because of time period and location.

(You could argue that the entity we call "our brain" acts in a similar capacity, but it is way more feral, survival-oriented, and amoral than the ISH is ever supposed to be. Also it isn't an individual fronter headmate who cares about talking to therapists.)

"Within the DID multiple's mind, (with the BP intact), the first assault will create a defensive alter-personality. The mind is mature and strong enough not to need the Essence to dissociate and take on the role of ISH. Therefore, no ISH exists, and the only dissociative entities are alter-personalities which have been developed in response to the particular type of abuse that the person suffered. If it is sexual abuse, i.e. a rape, then the alter-personality will be sexualized and may become a prostitute, using  aggressive sexual behavior to control and degrade men."

Ah yes, the "Fifi the Slut" alter type. We are sadly lacking in this type, proving that we are a failure at both Allisonian MPD and DID. Alas! Alack!

(Mac: Do I get to be Fifi the Slut?)

(Rogan: Don't be silly, Mac, you're not traumatized nearly enough. You're just horny.)

(Mac: It's true.)

"In the case of the MPD multiple, the second dissociated entity to form would be a False-Front alter-personality. This must be created by the ISH to replace the (OP) [sic, original personality] which has been deemed by the ISH to be too inadequate to stay in social control of the body. This first False-Front is designed and manufactured by the ISH to present an image to the abusive parent which will assure its survival. It may be made completely compliant, cooperative without crying, and able to absorb abuse without responding angrily. This will be the child the abusive parent can continue to abuse without any adverse reactions being created."

Rogan: The ISH is usually described in a very Christian godly way, and how this is squared with the amorality of creating a headmate to be used and abused is just... never dealt with, far as I know.

"the patient who comes in for therapy as an adult is not the OP. It is the latest of a long series of False-Front alter-personalities. Unfortunately for the naive therapist, no False-Front alter-personality can grow and mature with verbal therapy. They are programmed to be what they are, which is usually a whimpy [sic], depressed, suicide-prone whiner."

Rogan/Mori: See, this is why we tell people not to worship their therapists. At his peak, Ralph Allison was considered a little tin god of multi therapy, and this is how he talks about his own fucking patients: that the headmate who walks into the office is a whiner who is constitutionally incapable of ever getting better, so the best you can do is shuffle them off to get someone up front who can. It's shameful. And he wasn't alone in this; anyone who's spent a decent amount of time digging into old multi therapist books will find sentiments like this. We certainly did! Allison isn't even the worst, not by a long shot!

Conversely, "The BP [birth personality] of the DID multiple will be in charge of the body at all times, except when certain emotions trigger off the appearance an alter-personality. Therefore, s/he who comes in for therapy can grow and learn with verbal therapy. The BP can make constructive changes if provided with the proper tools and incentives. "

Talk about damning with faint praise.

"Whereas the DID multiple will have few alter-personalities, the MPD multiple must create a large number over the years of 'growing up.' [...] The MPD multiple can make up to 60 legitimate alter-personalities of all types. Beyond that, one should doubt the reality of the other 'creatures' seen as being true alter-personalities since the ISH will likely have run out of personality characteristics to use in new alter-personalities."

The Troops for Truddi Chase would like a word with you. Plus a bunch of my friends. Also, don't call us creatures.

(In case you were wondering, we don't fall correctly into either of Allison's camps. Our numbers are comparatively small, depending how you count, our abuse started early but whether it "counts" as severe enough before the age of seven is ambiguous, and we have neither ISH nor birth personality.)

"The therapy plan for the DID multiple must be individualized, depending on the nature of the few alter-personalities. The basic principle is that the BP must learn adult coping methods to deal with the problem that each alter-personality was designed to solve. [...] What is needed is for the BP to become able to cope with similar problems in the proper fashion for the society in which the person is living. That will cause the alter-personality to become obsolete. When that happens, it might disintegrate of its own accord, since, without a purpose, it cannot exist."

Says you.

"However, for the MPD multiple, a more complex and structured therapy plan is needed. The basic steps were outlined in 1980 in Minds In Many Pieces as follows:

1. Recognition of the existence of the alter-personalities.
2. Intellectual acceptance of this condition.
3. Coordination of alter-personalities.
4. Emotional acceptance of multiplicity.
5. Neutralization of persecutors.
6. Psychological integration.
7. Post-fusion experiences.
8. Spiritual integration."

I am deeply relieved to have evidence that therapists were using "integration" and "fusion" interchangeably, now that it's in vogue to treat the terms as completely different phenomena, when that's a comparatively recent thing. And oh, we'll get to Minds in Many Pieces someday, believe you me.

"in the MPD multiple, the ISH is an essential co-therapist who is always waiting inside to be invited to participate in reconstructive therapy. Therapy must be guided by the therapist and ISH, not by the patient. S/he will be running away from the pain of effective therapy and will be creating numerous crises to divert the therapist from dealing with her intrapsychic issues."

You know how we mentioned that a lot of medical multi stuff focused on training multis into deferring to medical authority, rather than learning and helping themselves? This is what I mean. Imagine walking into therapy and being told that YOU don't get to guide things, that the doctor and your pseudo-divine Inner Self-Helper are the boss! And if you start going into psychological crisis, well, that's just you manufacturing problems to distract the therapist and try to prevent progress. It's awful. It's infuriating. Shit like this is why our behavior in therapy tends to be aggressively "I am the employer and you are my valued employee" and why we don't have episodes while in therapy. It's a reaction to protect ourself from exactly this kind of bullshit.

"A major goal is for the therapist to bring forth the [MPD patient's] OP, who is the patient who needs to be rehabilitated. That requires extensive use of many hypnotic techniques, and the regular use of age-regression sessions."

Rogan: NO. NO. No no no. See, this is the sort of shit that gave the Memory Wars so much fuel. We have never been hypnotized, and I prefer to practice age-regression in much safer, more fun contexts... you know, like BDSM. Anyone who tells you this shit is required for healing is trying to sell you something. You can make an argument if you like that our "episodes" are self-hypnosis, but we do NOT have them around therapists. We don't like having them around anyone but ourself, thanks, for this exact reason. We are vulnerable in that altered state, and we don't hand that authority and power to just anybody.

Anyway, Allison describes the process of therapy (he doesn't go into much detail, reserving that for "later in the talk,") and states, "This will bring about the Neutralization of each Persecutor, and thereby the obsolescence of the associated Rescuer alter-personalities. This must be done for all Persecutor alter-personalities before the ISH will deem it safe for her to bring out the OP, who then must assimilate all of these parts into herself. That is what constitutes Psychological Integration."

That "must" sure is carrying a lot of weight there.

"The final Spiritual Integration of the OP and the ISH will occur sometime after formal psychotherapy has been completed. That requires that the integrated OP be exposed to many real life situations, so that s/he can learn how to cope with them in a socially constructive fashion. When the ISH considers his/her 'charge' to have passed these 'tests of the School of Hard Knocks,' s/he will then blend in with the OP, accomplishing the final goal of Spiritual Integration into the Birth Personality."

Again, the ISH is very Christian God in this whole framework. It's not really a surprise, seeing as Allison went into the whole Guardian Angel/possession angle at some point, but I don't see people mentioning that much so. Yes, this is very Christian.

On top of it, the ISH is so moral that it cannot kill, and it won't allow any headmates to kill either: "In the case of the MPD multiple, once the Essence has taken on the role of ISH, it is committed to the welfare of its charge, and it is operating under the highest ethical standards. It cannot condone the killing of its charge by anyone. It also will not allow its charge to fatally harm anyone else."

You see what I mean about getting too sucked into your own theories? Allison's theory of what the ISH is simply won't allow it to do bad things... even though it can and will create an alter to be an abuse sponge. But God forbid it kill! So if he's dealing with someone who did murder someone, well, then, they just can't have MPD, because then his theory breaks.

He doesn't think people with DID kill either, because "In the case of the DID multiple, the alter-personality is made for self-defense by the non-dissociated Essence, not for planned offense against others. [...] Survival is the reason for its existence, and killing 'in cold blood' is not a tool for survival." 

But that leads to an obvious problem: what if he DOES encounter a multiple who's clearly murdered someone? Are they just all faking? No! Allison creates a whole other made-up category and explanation for them!

"Therefore, in those cases where what appear to be hostile alter-personalities who have allegedly killed a stranger 'in cold blood,' I recommend that neither MPD nor DID be used as an diagnosis. These individuals have more likely created revengeful 'imaginary playmates from their imaginations, and this process can occur before or after age seven with equal ease. In the cases I have evaluated, these Imaginary Malignant Playmates (IMPs) have been made by the defendant when he knew of violent harm being done to members of his family, members he should have but could not protect. In his distress at being unable to protect them, he sought a means of revenge against this abuser of a helpless family member. He made up this IMP out of his personal imagination, to use as a tool of revenge, not self-protection. [...] This type of individual I cannot and will not include in the MPD or DID categories. He is, more properly, Whoever Has an Imaginary Malignant Playmate (WHIMP). I called these the Maybe Multiples in Courts and Corrections in 1987, but WHIMP seems accurately descriptive. [...] We need to be very careful not to confuse these WHIMPs with their IMPs with the other two types of multiples already described."

Ah yes, I love a therapist who creates a clever acronym to call us wimps, all so he can create a box for the Bad Multis to go in, not like the Good Multis that his precious theory states can't kill people.

So, in summary, Allison differentiates the two kinds of multiple (MPD and DID) as follows:

MPD	DID
trauma before age 7	trauma after age 7
abused in family home	abused outside family home
has ISH	no ISH
ISH first headmate, creates all others	no ISH
larger roster (max 60)	smaller roster

I don't know if this is the source of the tumblr urban legend or not, but if it is, clearly nobody bothered to read the damned thing, because it is overwhelmingly crackpot nonsense. Thank goodness nobody I've ever met has taken the Allisonian MPD/DID split seriously; his star seems to have faded quite a lot by 1995, and I hope it stays that way.

Comments

[cheliceri]

Is he even still, you know, shuffling around on this mortal coil, or did he like take a nose-dive into whereever the dead ones go? Because holy shit that’s a lot of WTF!

[lb_lee]

If he's dead, I haven't heard about it! And his website is still up. Far as I know, he's still alive, he just must be MEGA old, he got his undergrad degree over seventy years ago, so he must be at least ninety if he's still around. And he seems to have retired in 1995, so this paper may well mark sorta his "downfall."

[kossai]

want to highlight something here that just make jaw drop , but then literally get worse and now forget which part initially set off reaction . holy shit .

kossai do not have on paper nor fit any framework for DID diagnosis , given extensive spiritual-religious history and exploration without dissociation , but nonsense like this certainly make glad to say fuck that shit anyway . slightly hyperbolic , use cases exist and all , but ... wow this is not that ! wow this is so not that !

[lb_lee]

In a way, reading this stupid thing was cathartic, because it proved I wasn't insane or drinking Koolaid, it really WAS bad like this and there's a REASON we had to fight so hard for basic ideas like, "please treat us like we have moral weight."

The whole stupid Inner Self Helper thing got created as a term because Allison called Inner Self the same as REAL Self!

[wolfy_writing]

Much as I hate to agree with Ralph Allison about anything, and much as I hate the focus on age rather than the nature of the trauma involved, I don't think he's completely off-base here. I do think that there's a difference between people who experience violence outside their home/core family unit and those who experience it inside.

Yeah, it's common for bullshit to be built around taking something that's an accurate description of a general trend, and then misrepresent the trend as a rule. If you look at patterns among people with significant childhood trauma, you'll probably see a much higher overlap between "significant trauma started before the age of seven", "trauma came from within the home and family unit" and "developed specific ways of dealing related to never having felt safe" and also the total picture will be way too complicated to fit neatly into a binary categorization system. The bullshit starts when the trend becomes a rule and you start making excuses for why everything too complicated for a simplistic categorization system Does Not Count.

You see what I mean? The ISH is probably Allison's most lasting contribution to multi culture, and his definition of it changed over time, but could be summed up as, "the headmate who embodies the Higher Self, who knows everything and is helpful to the therapist and never gets angry or has any disagreeable habits."

When Internal Family Systems therapy became trendy I started reading about it and immediately was put off by how "self energy" was described, and the idea that everyone was automatically the most themselves when they were being warm, connected, cooperative, and above all calm, with every other aspect of who they are a lesser 'part'. This sounds like that taken to the next level.

"the patient who comes in for therapy as an adult is not the OP. It is the latest of a long series of False-Front alter-personalities. Unfortunately for the naive therapist, no False-Front alter-personality can grow and mature with verbal therapy. They are programmed to be what they are, which is usually a whimpy [sic], depressed, suicide-prone whiner."

This reminds me so much of the book Sibyl, the way it portrayed a sad neurotic "depleted self" and the late in the book appearance of the Blonde, all cheerful and convenient. It sounds like a lot of therapists working with multis were prone to pathologizing anyone in the system that the therapist doesn't like.

We are vulnerable in that altered state, and we don't hand that authority and power to just anybody.

Yeah, I read some books by alien abduction 'investigators' doing hypnotic memory 'retrieval' and yeah, there's a huge correlation between people who have what seems to be actual memories of trauma from impossible sources and people who've undergone dozens-to-hundreds of hours of hypnosis at the hands of a hypnotist who is completely confident they know what must have happened. (I got into the topic due to reading about therapy abuse and I'm continuously irritated at how neither of the two widely-recognized Sides Of The Debate is about the client's well-being.)

That requires that the integrated OP be exposed to many real life situations, so that s/he can learn how to cope with them in a socially constructive fashion. When the ISH considers his/her 'charge' to have passed these 'tests of the School of Hard Knocks,' s/he will then blend in with the OP, accomplishing the final goal of Spiritual Integration into the Birth Personality.

You're right, that is so Christian! A supremely powerful being that gets to put others through whatever torment as a 'test' while having its own goodness treated as beyond question.

"Therefore, in those cases where what appear to be hostile alter-personalities who have allegedly killed a stranger 'in cold blood,' I recommend that neither MPD nor DID be used as an diagnosis.

"Some multis break the rules of the two categories I've established, but I can't question my rules, so now there are exactly three rigidly rule-defined categories and I'm still always right!"

[lb_lee]

Yeah, Allison’s idea of the Inner Self and the ISH (1975-1977) predates Schwartz beginning IFS by a good few years (1987), and I have no reason to believe Allison influenced Schwartz, but Allison DOES claim he got the idea from theosophy, so it’s possible both guys drew from a common previous idea of the higher self! I’m not sure but I’m super curious now!

Re: “It sounds like a lot of therapists working with multis were prone to pathologizing anyone in the system that the therapist doesn't like.”

It’s not just therapists that do this but they sure can be nasty about it!

By the way, I thought of a book that might be of interest to you, if you haven’t already hit it: Crazy Therapies, by Margaret Thaler Singer. She was a clinical psychologist who came to focus on undue influence, cults, stuff like that, and I remember respecting her work when I read it, though it’s been a decade. Might be up your alley!

[wolfy_writing]

That sounds like an interesting book, I'll check it out! Thanks!

[lb_lee]

Oh hey, and I just learned of another, quite a bit older than Singer: Phyllis Chesler’s “Women and Madness,” from 1972. That means it predates Sybil and the big multi boom, but her whole thesis is male domination of female patients in therapeutic contexts, so it seems relevant to your study! Thinking of checking it out myself!

[wolfy_writing]

Oh, excellent, thanks!

[multiple_altiple]

>"When Internal Family Systems therapy became trendy I started reading about it and immediately was put off by how "self energy" was described, and the idea that everyone was automatically the most themselves when they were being warm, connected, cooperative, and above all calm, with every other aspect of who they are a lesser 'part'."

Haha, yeah... I was basically forced into syscovery by a chain of coincidences that began with learning about Internal Family Systems, and for a hot minute I thought I was "the Self". Lol no. Just the host.

>"Yeah, I read some books by alien abduction 'investigators' doing hypnotic memory 'retrieval' and yeah, there's a huge correlation between people who have what seems to be actual memories of trauma from impossible sources and people who've undergone dozens-to-hundreds of hours of hypnosis at the hands of a hypnotist who is completely confident they know what must have happened. (I got into the topic due to reading about therapy abuse and I'm continuously irritated at how neither of the two widely-recognized Sides Of The Debate is about the client's well-being.)"

I feel similarly about the history of DID in general. The deeper you get the more of a fucking shitshow the whole thing is:

"I hypnotized and drugged this woman and she remembered being raped by Satanists when she was 6 months old." <- guy who believes he's a CIA mind-control assassin

"Erm, have you considered that diagnoses of this "disorder" drastically increased after it became diagnosable? Checkmate." <- guy who's being bankrolled by child sex abusers

[lb_lee]

Yeah, the history of the diagnoses of MPD and DID are total disasters. There’s a reason we resisted getting a diagnosis for a long time!

Apparently the idea of the Self as a separate headmate or something is a misunderstanding of IFS, just extremely widespread? A friend linked me an essay on it, though IFS has never been a huge thing of ours so I can’t claim authority.

[wolfy_writing]

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

That is exactly the thing I hate! It's a fight between parents who want unquestioning veneration while having child abuse accusations against them and treating their adult children in disturbing ways, and therapists who want unquestioning veneration while having client abuse accusations against them and admitting to treating clients in disturbing ways. I don't want to be on either of those sides.

[lb_lee]

That is the most succinct and accurate summary of the Memory Wars I've ever seen.

[dreamshaper]

To be honest, having seen some of the more outlandish things hardline system exclusionists have said on tumblr, I can definitely see people reading this paper and thinking “yes, this is perfect” despite… everything about it.

Reading how some of Allison’s work seems purposed to separate “good victims” from the “bad WHIMPS” etc., it seems clear to me that exclusionists are using these psychiatric frameworks as intended: arbitrary rules to deploy against people they find unsavory or discomfiting. No wonder exclusionists hold up (pieces of) these theories as gospel — it’s designed from the jump to give you frameworks for separating the Pure from the Impure.

Overall, I appreciate this post and your commitment to delving into multi history.

- Gil-Galad

[lb_lee]

I mean, Allison is kinda a nothingburger now, but he was given AWARDS for his multi work. This guy was NOT a fringe figure for a good twenty years of practice! It’s not a surprise that when the medical establishment was rewarding him so, civilians would treat him with respect and deference too!

[chameleons3]

Imaginary Malignant Playmate. Gurl I am fuckin losing it.

60! The max you can have is 60! After that, you're a Fakey McFakerson! Where did you get the number 60? Source: dude just trust me.

I/we find it fascinating that this entire construction seems to be about the clinician reasserting power over a folk/s who have adapted to trauma by finding ways to have agency and autonomy. This is a glimmer of an analysis at 8am half caffeinated but bear with us here.

Trauma - thing that was too much for someone/s to handle at the moment(s) experienced, right. So it sticks in your body or whatever. What is handling? Control. Like, not control in the authoritative way, but, agency. I can't control the world around me, what people do, what natural disasters happen, the wars outside my door. What can I control? My own internal landscape, my self, my selves. There is absolutely nothing and no one in this entire goddamn world that can stick their grubby paws in my mind and fuck around with that without my opt-in.

So Ralph Fuckerson here decides he can't jive with that, and whips up this language and framework for the clinician to coerce collectives into opting in. With uh, let's see: 1. Belittling: "whiner," "deemed inadequate." 2. Shame: Arguments around purpose, obsolescence, existence. 3. False alliances: the ISH, the cooperation, shit, whatever. Yeah cooperation on the ISH's terms. You know who uses weird language and arguments to create false hierarchies in collectives and groups? Abusive people who want power. Oh and conveniently the clinician decides who the ISH is, very cool.

Might dig deeper into this thought but whew. Hate this guy.

[lb_lee]

Allison’s star seems to have sunk around this time with his retirement, and I wonder how much was people thinking, “what if this IMPs and WHIMPs thing is kinda... you know... dubious?”

Phyllis Chesler wrote a 1972 book on how male therapists and doctors use their power over women, and 1972 is RIGHT before Sybil and the resulting multi boom, but I am considering checking her book out because it seems RELEVANT.

[bodyetal]

crow&: handy how the maximum number of headmates is a clean multiple of ten! if there’s one thing i know, it’s that base ten rules the human mind, and that age six and 364 days is the last moment you can fragment your psyche. (we’ve always found it fascinating and frustrating how confident people are that there is a solid age that anything happens in humans—we can’t even nail down puberty!)

the snippy acronyms are not even close to the worst part but they sure do make me angry! the connotations of such a viciously christian man calling the shitty headmates he hates “imps” also pisses me off nearly as much as the “whimp” thing.

[lb_lee]

You will sadly probably have to hear more about Allison from me, he was all over the place in medical multi shit from the seventies through the nineties.

Btw never got a response for meeting up! Is this Monday good?

[bodyetal]

that sounds painful but i can’t pretend it isn’t my thing, me and TW dream of a psych phd specifically so we can talk more shit about that kind of thing

oh shit, looks like i switched out mid-message 😭 yes, it is! will pm you

[multiple_altiple]

...BRUH. This is so crazy stupid it's almost impressive. This entire thing is just "source: trust me bro".

In a science as soft as psychology, you should never be stating anything this specific this confidently; at least not in the context of how the subconscious works. He is speaking with SO MUCH confidence and authority; it's as if he literally cut open someone's head and wrote down all the little guys he saw in there.

The human mind is never going to be as rigorously and concretely mapped as, like, the laws of physics. If you're not comfortable with that... why are you even a psychiatrist?

He might have a kernel of a point in that systems who were abused at a very young age may be less likely to see themselves as having an "original". But how he managed to blow that up into not only an absolute rule, but grounds for a separate diagnosis is beyond me.

Also, the ISH will run out of personality traits after 60?? What?? I can definitely think of more than 60 personality traits, and I'm not even an infallible divine Essence.

[lb_lee]

Thing is, having read the first chapter of the 1980 edition of his book, Minds In Many Pieces, he does seem to have believed that there was one grand explanation for much brainstuff. Schizophrenia was solved with this drug, bipolar was solved with that drug, and when he ran across MPD, at the time considered so vanishingly rare less than fifty cases existed through all known written history, well, OBVIOUSLY he just needed to find the things that extremely small population had in common and solve it! In his 1974 paper where he’s first kicking around what became his idea of the ISH, he complains how nobody even seemed to know what CREATED the condition, because it wasn’t a trauma thing yet!

Not sure how much was him individually and how much was the beliefs of psychiatry at the time.

[(Anonymous)]

the deification of the ISH is so funny to us cause one of our earliest known headmates was a guardian angel that was probably the closest we've ever gotten to this fraud's concept of the ISH, who has, after waking up after several years from The Horrors(tm), gone "yea fuck god, actually, what the Fuck."

Feel like if this guy is still alive we'd cause his brain to implode trying to comprehend us.

[lb_lee]

Rogan: My spiritual practice involves a contract to keep gods away from me so, you know...

Mori: no gods, no masters, no therapy gurus!

[rachelkg]

So (in this model, if it's MPD) the therapist is guaranteed not to meet the Real One until very late in the game, and until the Real One comes out the only useful one to engage with is a one-dimensional embodiment of helpfulness? Conveeeeeeeenient.

[(Anonymous)]

Somewhat from experience, this guy's..."methods" sound like the kind of shit that'd just make More alters.

-Sploosh

[lb_lee]

Apparently he had at least ONE publicly noted success, with Henry Dana Hawksworth (who wrote his own biography in 1977, though with the same cowriter as Allison’s 1980 book, Minds in Many Pieces). But he also had at least one suicide after he exorcised said multi patient.

Hawksworth sorta disappeared afterward. Wonder what became of him...

[(Anonymous)]

...damn. Hope Hawksworth got out ok. Hopefully far, far away from whatever Allison was trying to cook.

-Sploosh

[lb_lee]

Ain’t it just? Funny how that works out!

[gullwingdoors]

Legitimately kind of fascinated at the "60 max personalities" figure. Like... We're big 6 enjoyers, ourselves, love the number, but... sixty? It feels like he could've dropped the Liars Fakers Making-It-Up Line down ten and settled for a nice even fifty or pushed all the way to a big round hundred, and... well, it'd still be total bunk, but I feel like 50 and 100 slot a lot better into the "nice understandable multiple of 10 everyone will Surely Believe" limit than 60? Like, come on, man, if you're really set on making bizarre nonsense brain-claims up and falling for them, at least give them a little bit extra tuning first.

(Might be a bit of a strange rant, but like? Just felt compelled to get it out.)

[lb_lee]

It's kinda hilarious to think that citations like this are just made up out of wholecloth. Thank goodness it didn't become one of those urban legends passed around for ages!

[mint_phalanx]

Reanna: Is it weird that I'm offended, as a tulpamancer, by the Imaginary Malignant Playmate thing? It reminds me of the creepypasta tulpa who kills the host and does bad things.

It also makes me think of how sysmeds see tulpas. They see them as glorified imaginary friends who the person says are real just to mock whoever they deem to be real systems. It sucks because I think it's cool that something imaginary can become real.

In fact, Allison's article sounds a lot like something a sysmed would make. Worse, they would think it's the consensus.

[lb_lee]

I mean, Allison was a therapist who saw multi as a medical problem. Where do you think the “med” part of sysmed came from?

[synecdoches]

I do think that there's a difference between people who experience violence outside their home/core family unit and those who experience it inside.

Besser van der Kolk talks about this extensively in The Body Keeps the Score. He postulates (and cites references) that those with consistent emotional support are more able to recover from trauma, and for kids, that emotional support has to come from their caretakers because of the way kids' lives are controlled. If a caretaker is abusive, or doesn't acknowledge or prevent abuse within the home, the kid has nowhere to get emotional support and no safe place to process the trauma. He cites studies about kids sent away from London during the Blitz having worse emotional outcomes than kids who stayed in the active warzone with their parents. The age of abuse is not his focus, but the relation to the patient's home and dependence. (There are things I disagree with in this book, and it's not focused on MPD/DID, but overall it's good.)

Anyone who tells you this shit is required for healing is trying to sell you something.

I find this is true of almost everything. Integration, for example. By the standard of integration, I was healthier before we realized there were more of us. But that's absolutely not the case; discovering and acknowledging each other has allowed us all to heal and work together. I see no reason to make the goal assimilation when our different perspectives and strengths continue to help us learn, discover, and grow. (Respect to anyone who has integrated/fused and found it helpful. I just don't think it should be the be-all end-all.)

But also, anyone who tries to tell you X is required (for just about anything inter- or intrapersonal) may be trying to sell you something. Hell, it's true a lot of the time with everything else, too. You might find a plate useful for eating, but it's not the only way to hold food.

[lb_lee]

Our own personal experience agrees with the thing about emotional support making a huge difference. Our roster churn slowed WAY down in our senior year of high school, and we thought that maybe it was because senior year was less violent. Turns out no, not at all, but we DID have an emancipated friend with their own place who found out what was happening and took us in. That person saved our life! Besides the simple security of having somewhere to go, we didn’t have to lie or hide what was happening, because they knew and understood, which was a godsend, and Rogan (our main violence-sponge at the time) now had an extremely compelling motivation to survive!

That one friend made a huge difference.

[synecdoches]

Yes, that makes a lot of sense! One person's support can be the dividing line between surviving and not, and especially having a safe physical space to inhabit and process, that would make a world of difference. I'm glad you had that, because I'm glad you're still here.

[lb_lee]

Rogan: Me too. When I think of how that one friend stuck their neck out for me, how dangerous it was for them, I am humbled with gratitude. They truly were the fucking best, and I am glad they seem to have a good, happy life now.