“Multiple personality disorder” probably doesn't exist • Hacker News Board

Re: “Multiple personality disorder” probably doesn't exist

#91

Post by moth-fuzz » Sat, Apr 23, 2022, 10:28 PM UTC

Trasmatta wrote: post #24

See also: Internal Family Systems. It's a form of therapy that considers all of us has having many different discrete "parts". I recently started IFS therapy and have been having success with it. I'm not sure how literally I take the "parts" (I think they may be much less "solid" and more transient than IFS claims), but it seems to be a really interesting and helpful way to approach your own mind. https://en.wikipedi…

The thing about DID and IFS is the underlying recognition that most people have parts, sometimes dissociated (as is the case with BPD, for example, and other dissociative disorders), and that this is part of normal human psychology. The crux of it is that this is simply one of the fundamental tools our brains has to use in response to trauma. The whole disorder part of dissociative identity disorder is when it becomes a problem that impedes healthy functioning. Just like we all have anxiety, it's there to protect us and warn us of potential dangers, but an anxiety disorder is when the anxiety is no longer helpful, damaging, even.

Re: “Multiple personality disorder” probably doesn't exist

#92

Post by frereubu » Sat, Apr 23, 2022, 10:29 PM UTC

kixiQu wrote: post #74

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrupulosity Reminds me of the discussions about young women presenting with tics clearly influenced by particular Tourette's influencers. A person would definitely not have had those symptoms in those ways if they weren't seeing that content ("fake" rather than simply innate), but can still be experiencing the root of it all as real compulsions and anxiety... but can then also seek atte…

This is a great article on the Tourette's influencers scene, which I had no idea existed: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/02/social-med...

Re: “Multiple personality disorder” probably doesn't exist

#93

Post by CactusOnFire » Sat, Apr 23, 2022, 10:31 PM UTC

pnathan wrote: post #46

I'm friends with someone who has clinical DID. It is, as near as I can tell, not induced by media, etc, but by extreme and profound trauma. > The people who have traditionally been treated for DID have suffered, greatly, and not in the cool arty time-to-dye-my-hair-again type of suffering common to social media performance, but actual, painful, pitiable suffering. Those patients who have been diagnosed in the past wi…

I dated someone who had it- was beaten heavily during their childhood formative years, and told me that the separation of identities was a means of coping.

It seemed like an extreme emotional compartmentalization which left them with a fractured sense of self.

Some people might say that they could have just been pulling an elaborate hoax on me from a year and a half. But the amount of acting it would have required just to convince me of this without any real reward would have been a sign of even greater emotional problems than even the different personalities.

Re: “Multiple personality disorder” probably doesn't exist

#94

Post by thelettere » Sat, Apr 23, 2022, 10:33 PM UTC

pnathan wrote: post #46

I'm friends with someone who has clinical DID. It is, as near as I can tell, not induced by media, etc, but by extreme and profound trauma. > The people who have traditionally been treated for DID have suffered, greatly, and not in the cool arty time-to-dye-my-hair-again type of suffering common to social media performance, but actual, painful, pitiable suffering. Those patients who have been diagnosed in the past wi…

Dude has exactly zero expertise in the field or experience with this population, and yet he makes these kinds of claims. And all based on an article or two he found.

Pathetic. Almost every psychiatric diagnosis is problematic, and articles questioning any's validity can be dug up. Doesn't mean the emotional/cognitive/behavioral cluster does not exist.

The link between trauma and disassociation is incontrovertible, and DID is merely an extreme version of this. Case reports of it across Western, Middle Eastern and Asian societies across the last 2 centuries show a remarkable degree of consistency in their reports of this, so the idea that this is some kind of passing fake fad is absurd.

The only thing the article adds is a critique of a Tik-tok sub-culture. Color me shocked that this is not a particularly enlightened group - but I guess this is the kind of hard-hitting "journalism" popular Substacks were made for.

Re: “Multiple personality disorder” probably doesn't exist

#95

Post by jahewson » Sat, Apr 23, 2022, 10:34 PM UTC

vintermann wrote: post #79

Self-interpretations can't really be right or wrong. Science can't tell you how you should see yourself. That said, there are self-interpretations that seem pretty self-destructive, and seeing yourself as having multiple identities seems like one.

Sure they can. There’s no shortage of people out there carrying around negative perceptions of themselves that are wholly incorrect. The self is a construct and your brain will assemble it out of its experiences.

Re: “Multiple personality disorder” probably doesn't exist

#96

Post by rossdavidh » Sat, Apr 23, 2022, 10:34 PM UTC

Barrin92 wrote: post #40

Yet another entry in the emerging genre of making an entirely uncontroversial point (criticizing people for glorifying and faking mental illness for attention), followed by the second half which is the author complaining about how everyone silences him for saying brave truths. Much better than false victimhood due do fake mental illness to get clicks on tiktok is of course false victimhood due to fake controversial j…

I don't know if I totally agree but I definitely felt, somewhere around the halfway point, something along the lines of "whoa it felt like we were making some good points here but not it feels like we've gone into angry rant mode".

Re: “Multiple personality disorder” probably doesn't exist

#97

Post by pessimizer » Sat, Apr 23, 2022, 10:34 PM UTC

betwixthewires wrote: post #58

Good luck making any headway trying to talk about things like this by using reason. These people and their enablers don't care about reason, they'll just accuse you of "denying their lived experience" or some other such meaningless string of words. Any attempt to actually help them, as opposed to nodding in firm agreement, is going to be met as if it is an act of aggression. They don't want help because they know the…

When you derive all of your self-worth from a disadvantaged identity, attacking that identity is akin to attempting murder.

This is different from people with actual disadvantages who have spend enormous effort to hide and to hopefully overcome them, not to broadcast them. Broadcasting weakness is not something that animals do except to avoid imminent and overwhelming attack.

My upset is when people who actually disadvantaged get caught up in this rhetoric and ideology. When the heat gets too hot for the fakers, they'll move on to the next thing, leaving the people with real problems behind.

Re: “Multiple personality disorder” probably doesn't exist

#98

Post by moth-fuzz » Sat, Apr 23, 2022, 10:39 PM UTC

This article is chock full of cynicism with no actual factual reasoning. Deeply reactionary and without any actual point. A polemic, at best. Need I count the number of references to tumblr, tiktok, social media memes, dyed-hair left-leaning millennials with quirky personalities? All that self-victimization, which is all for the purpose of, let me guess, attention? You're the one writing articles on the internet, my man.

The best evidence this article can come up with is equally polemic articles and a hand-picked troupe of social media teens. Selection bias at its finest.

Is this as tiring for anyone else as it is for me?

Note the top comments saying the same things about homosexuality and transgenderism, of course.

Re: “Multiple personality disorder” probably doesn't exist

#99

Post by TedDoesntTalk » Sat, Apr 23, 2022, 10:47 PM UTC

tus666 wrote: post #75

> DID is often presented as a kind of get-of-accountability-free card, as someone who claims to have it can always say that past bad behavior was caused by another personality and is thus not their responsibility. Isn't that basically mental illness in general? > fabrications shaped by therapists who insist that traumatic events must have happened It seems that the idea of trauma (especially childhood) itself remains…

> Isn't that basically mental illness in general?

I’m puzzled by this question. Are you suggesting that all mental illness allows the one suffering to abdicate “past bad behavior”?

Re: “Multiple personality disorder” probably doesn't exist

#100

Post by pyuser583 » Sat, Apr 23, 2022, 10:52 PM UTC

pnathan wrote: post #46

I'm friends with someone who has clinical DID. It is, as near as I can tell, not induced by media, etc, but by extreme and profound trauma. > The people who have traditionally been treated for DID have suffered, greatly, and not in the cool arty time-to-dye-my-hair-again type of suffering common to social media performance, but actual, painful, pitiable suffering. Those patients who have been diagnosed in the past wi…

Someone very close to me had a serious mental illness. Nobody has any idea what the illness is. Different doctors give it different names. The same doctors give it different names.

I eat the impression doctors are less worried about the “anatomy” of the illness, and more worried about finding a cure.

If “take these anti-psychotics daily, get 8 hours of sleep a night, and meet weekly with a therapist” prevents symptoms … they really don’t care if it’s a psychotic disorder (as opposed to, say, a mood disorder).

Psychology seems to going from a “deep mind” approach to a “shallow mind” approach.