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

[sad_wings_of_destiny]

I honestly wonder how many of the people who so naively think any of this is in solidarity with the idea that we're all actual people and that psychiatry is ever on our side have had to deal with actual mental health professionals?

I've obviously only got the Tumblr syscourse circles I'm aware of, y'all get into spaces outside of that so I don't know what kind of fun might be there, but at least on Tumblr Id wonder how many anti-endo syscoursers are self-dx'd and inexperienced w/ the mental health system.

bc Id rather an answer to that that than an answer to "how many "pro-endo?" systems might be naive enough to break my heart still thinking medical science cares" :/

An example of where else this crops up that especially baffles me are the DID systems trying to argue "alter isnt a dehumanizing word!" etc and that "alters are people too!" like they didn't take that from the "healthy multiplicity" movement and act like it's how things are actually viewed and treated.

And lords, if They change it to "complex dissociative disorder" I'd be tempted to flat-out reclaim "MPD" if it didn't actually just describe the Rook-median-subsystem deal so well.

[turing_incomplete]

(cw brief mention of integration)

-

Yeah I wonder that too?? There are some pretty anti-self-dx people, but I think the general trend is to be okay with self-dx -- after all, many of them are basically asking systems to self-diagnose with either DID or OSDD-1.

At the very least, they trend younger, which makes me think that even if they have had some interaction, it might just be whoever diagnosed them and possible direct referrals, not being thrown into situations where their desires are at odds with their psychs'. I think you can see some of that when people talk about integration -- yes, treatment guidelines allow for cooperation rather than integration as a final goal, but it's always "but integration is best" and "well, if the system has reasons for not wanting to integrate, like 'narcissistic investment in their separateness' or just being too disordered." I imagine you'll eventually start running into "So, are you integrated yet?" once you start doing phase 3 DID therapy.

What kills me most is that a lot of them are autistic. Liiiike if you want to talk about another population for whom psychiatric research is rarely fair and validating...??? Or are we gonna attack anyone who says they have a theory of mind and empathy.

We've actually seen people claim that the only reason people think "alter" is dehumanizing is because of Bad Endo Misinformation lmao. On the other hand, they almost have a point: We see some authors moving away from "alter", because they see even that as suggesting too much "reality" or "separateness". :) Parts, dissociated self-states, etc. Structural dissociation is convenient; you only have to talk about ANPs and EPs, never alters.

(While at the same time, also seeing people claim that healthy multiplicity was "actually for people with diagnoses (ie Real Systems) and they did good things, and then all these endos latched onto it". That idea came along with something I still say to one of my friends when I want to get him scremming: "Mad pride is for people who are proud of their mental illnesses." Tumblr anti-ableism, everyone: It's ableist to not want to call yourself disordered or sick, because that means you're 100% saying that being sick is a bad thing uwu)

Hahah I've joked that if we ever decided to Officially Adopt medical terminology as a whole, we'd call ourselves MPD. :V I'm pretty curious to see what will happen if the DSM-6 makes a massive shift to the category, like calling it "complex dissociative disorder" or creating "complex PTSD" and folding it under that (another proposal we've seen).

This got long 🙃