did???

[turing_incomplete]

I never quiiiite know what to think when I see people say that "multiple personality disorder" was switched to "dissociative identity disorder" out of a recognition that "we're more than personalities!" or any other kind of recognition of "identity."

I mean, nice to think that medical science is on your side, I suppose, but also that's basically the opposite of what any expert talking about the switch says. "Nobody can really have multiple personalities -- DID recognizes that this is a single person who has dissociated into different identity-states."

And there are still plenty of people annoyed with that "identity" word. "Complex dissociative disorder" is the direction we've seen a lot of people head in.

I'm sure it's nice to think that psychiatric medicine is on your side here, but if your side is "believing people in a system to be meaningfully separate people with legitimate identities" then it reaaaally isn't. (And I suppose "thinking psychiatry is on your side when it isn't" is the source of a lot of problems, oof.)

Comments

[lb_lee]

Yeah, alt.support.dissociation seems to have had a fair few people go, "Fuck this DID nonsense, MPD forever!" back in 1994, and there were apparently PASSIONATE fights about the whole thing back in the day.

And of course you still have the complication of MPD being used in other countries.

I admit, at this point I just want the DSM folks to shut up and stick to one name just out of pure convenience so I don't have to give an etymology lesson every time I talk about it.

...well, "complex dissociative disorder" would make an effortless straight line to "I have a complex" jokes, I guess?