Talk:Multiple personality controversy

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=While reading this article I came to think that opinion only misses the one valid point of D.I.D./M.P.D. Which is, the validity of childhood sexual and phyical abuse. Without the ability for safety of a child to live in an abusive home there is that greater risk for many diagnosis. Without safety any and ALL defence mechanisms may be used for the loss of protection. As for recovery of memory loss at a later date for people in MOST states there is a S.O.L, Statute of Limitations for filing charges against their abusers. In this article there was mention of something no one being comfortable talking about , sexual abuse with a child. What about the child? What about their comfort level and thier ability of 'talking about it'? My question really is, with doubt about abuse happening by "real mothers and fathers" and no DSM IV diagnosis for false memory syndrome can there be an escape valve for children in their minds from horribly abusive homes? D.I.D. eliminates the value of imaginary friends DSM states this in it's diagnostic tools. How does one ecsape the horrors of rape at ages 2,3,4,and so on? --111xena 12:59, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm not really sure I understand what you're asking for here. Are you saying that you want things like repressed memory to be discussed more fully in this article? There are articles about sexual abuse, repressed memory, etc al. on Wikipedia already; the aim of this article isn't to re-state the contents of those articles, as they're pretty lengthy already, but to provide an overview of some of the controversies associated with the general concept of multiple personality, of which abuse/repression/etc is only one. --Sethrenn 04:11, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Contents 1 Believers paragraph 2 Changes as of 7/19/06 3 Sources 4 ICD-9 5 External links

[edit] Believers paragraph

In the Believers paragraph it is written that "Dr. Ross later reversed his position, declaring multiplicity to be "an elaborate form of pretending" and essentially agreeing with the detractors". I was wondering where the author found that information? I contacted Colin Ross (M.D., not Ph.D.) about this and his reply was "The Wikipedia statement is incorrect and has no foundation", and he told me he still supported the diagnosis of DID. So will the author of the paragraph please cite his sources? --80.170.103.216 16:34, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

I am not the author of the paragraph, I just copied the text here from another article to which it was largely irrelevant.

I think we can safely assume that Dr Ross is likely to be unchallenged as the world's foremost expert on what he does and does not think, so the sentence is gone.

NB it is not uncommon for this kind of controversy to be exacerbated by people who seem to pick a well known name from a hat and then attribute their favorite "statement du jour" to them. Unless somebody takes the trouble to check, most of the time, nobody realises - EVER! Thanks for checking --Zeraeph 19:33, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Well it may not be incorrect, cause Mr Ross did change his point of view overtime, "adding water to his wine" if you know what I mean. For example in the Oxford Textbook of Psychopathology (1999), he declares there are 4 pathways to DID which can be combined altogether : abuse, neglect, iatrogenia, malingering. He was far less prudent in his earlier articles (late 80's, early 90's). So he may have written somewhere that, after all, DID was just role-playing. But without sources, it does seem wiser to have deleted this statement. --Rl11 00:29, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

I think I'm the one who put that quote in. It was part of a much longer statement Ross gave about how "multiple personality does not really mean there is more than one person using the body, there is only one personality," something about "the brain can only support one personality" and something about the role of denial in coping with child abuse. I believe that Ross stated this in an interview he gave around the time The Osiris Complex was published. It may even be in the book, although I am not sure about that.

Dr. Ross was trying to deal with the aftermath of the overdiagnosis fad, scandals and lawsuits of the period. Modern psychiatry had taken a thorough whacking in the courts and the media, and were in the process of retrenching. They changed their policy on MPD, renamed it DID, and in general tried to disconnect from the whacked-out lunacy they themselves had in large part created. Among the claims that were now considered to be ludicrous were assertions by various doctors and MPD patients (e.g., Truddi Chase and her therapist) that persons in a multiple system were people, or at least were experienced as people by the client, and in such cases integration should not be the goal of therapy, but instead cooperation should be sought. By our correspondence with some multiples who are in therapy, there are professionals today who do see group members as persons and do not insist on integration, but at the time this would have been an extremely unwise position to take.

I've heard from an ex-client of Ross that he is something of a politician, and will uphold any side of a controversy that seems to be favored by the majority of his colleagues. But that's hearsay. I will find that quote; it is among my things. --Bluejay Young 04:22, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Changes as of 7/19/06

As of July 17, 2006, I have rewritten much of the article. As much of the content was added from the main Dissociative Identity Disorder page, it was somewhat dis-organized and contained redundant information in several sections.

I have tried very hard to make the article NPOV and impartial and to cover all aspects of the controversy. My personal views are somewhat biased towards natural/healthy multiplicity, so I have tried to keep my own bias out of it as much as I could. Please let me know if it does not seem NPOV enough and how it could be improved.

The controversies about satanic ritual abuse and recovered memory are described in extensive detail in their respective articles, which are linked from this one, so I thought it was unnecessary to go into great detail about the controversies here. I also made efforts whenever possible to distinguish the concept of multiple personalities, in the strictest sense, from controversies specifically associated with MPD therapy.

Note: I realized after posting my edits that I hadn't been logged in at the time of posting-- my IP address is shown, not my wikipedia user name. I'm sorry for any confusion this may have caused-- it's me, not a random vandal. --Sethrenn 02:59, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sources

I request more credible psychological, sociological & psychiatrical sources to be added, if anyone can spend some time working on this article. As for me, cross-cultural studies are of especial interest. Thank you very much in advance! Eli the Barrow-boy 16:36, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

A lot of the sources of the information used here can be found in the main Dissociative Identity Disorder article, as well as in the Healthy Multiplicity article and the Satanic Ritual Abuse and Repressed Memory articles. For instance, the current version of the Dissociative Identity Disorder article basically gives a more extensive version of the psychoanalytic model of multiple personality, which we summarized here.

Since all of those articles are linked from within this one, is it necessary to add a citation after every statement? That just seems to me as though it would clutter the article with redundant citations. I do understand your concern about needing to source the statements, but again, a lot of the citations come from the same articles. As for the chronology and history, we do want to go through eventually and write individual articles on all of the notable 'cases' cited.

Regarding the cross-cultural information, unfortunately, we haven't found much material on that. Part of the problem is that most of the existing cross-cultural studies focus on models and theories of multiple personality as a dissociative disorder formed in reaction to trauma, rather than simply on the concept of many selves or souls sharing a body, regardless of whether those conceptions match with the Western model. Therefore, people who report experiencing the phenomena considered in the West to be symptoms of MPD/DID will be considered multiples for the purposes of such studies, whereas people and cultures who experience multiple selves through some other paradigm in which dissociative symptoms don't figure prominently will be overlooked. We certainly will add things as we find them, however. --Sethrenn 10:09, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Your request for "credible psychological, sociological & psychiatrical (sic) sources" is understandable. However it is not necessary to place a "citation needed" tag after each and every sentence. It is relatively easy to list the sources of the information in this article as references or footnotes at the end of the article. The only published crosscultural study that we are aware of is Suryani and Jensen's Trance and Possession in Bali, which is already cited in the article. --Bluejay Young 01:31, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] ICD-9

Incorrect Questionable data: "The International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems continues to list it as Multiple Personality Disorder." It does not in ICD-9: [1] [2]. Eli the Barrow-boy 21:47, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Although it does in ICD10: [3] Eli the Barrow-boy 22:06, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] External links

I removed most of the external links, especially those sites which were mere message boards or blogs. I also pared down some of the source links to cmbine them into sections. See {{Wikipedia:External links]] for the policy on links (in short, don;t have many of them, and make them as encyclopedic as possible).

I also noticed that one of the links in the supposed "criticism" section actually went to a website very heavily pro-multiplicty, so that was removed, as well as the rather self-indulgent adding of their own site to the history of MPD. It's pretty clear that someone from that website went to town on this article and slanted it quite severely. The same can be said for the main article. DreamGuy 08:48, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Hi, I'm the author of the article rewrite. When I first rewrote this section last summer, I stated that I had tried to make it as NPOV as possible and would like suggestions as to how to make it more impartial, if people perceived it as being too partial. I was hoping that said discussion could come in the form of, well, discussion, rather than deciding I had gotten into this article to slant it to my own POV. I don't _want_ it to be slanted. If it is, you need to be specific about where and why. The article is about controversy, which includes not only controversy over whether multiplicity exists but over what the nature of it is. I didn't want to keep it solely to the question of "is DID a valid diagnosis."

I do agree that "don't have too many links" and "don't link to messageboards and blogs" are legitimate policies, and if someone had made the suggestion to me, I would have been willing to remove a lot of the links of my own accord.

(Also, "Multiple Personality Disorder in the Courts" is not a pro-multiplicity article. The author of that article doesn't even believe multiplicity exists except as an artifact of therapy. If you're referring to the site it's hosted on, should hosting sites really be a factor in what gets linked, though? I mean, some of the historical links went back to articles hosted on a Spiritualist site, which doesn't necessarily mean I'm endorsing a Spiritualist pov in the article.)

The problem is, as I stated in my talk comment when I originally rewrote the article, there hasn't been much attempt to distinguish the Western concepts of multiple personality disorder and dissociative identity disorder, from the concept of many persons or selves inhabiting one body in the strictest sense. There's been a lot of very legitimate criticism of the research conducted by self-proclaimed MPD specialists. However, there isn't much evidence either way on the philosophical question of whether it is possible to have more than one personality or self-- quite aside from all the issues that got tacked onto the concept of multiplicity due to the diagnostic fad.

I don't think that, in and of themselves, mentioning non-Western ideas of multiple selves, or mentioning the fact that there are people who report that they experience multiple selves as a natural state and not a disorder and that some of them have formed an online subculture, constitute an unreasonably pro-multiplicity slant. --Sethrenn 10:50, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

"If you're referring to the site it's hosted on, should hosting sites really be a factor in what gets linked, though?"

Well, it does seem odd to present a critical essay on a site that is totally against that viewpoint... seems kind of stealthy and deceptive, though the page itself isn't bad. But that raises the question of where that article come from. If it's reprinted from elsewhere without permission it's a copyright violation, and we don't link to those normally either. If it exists on another site, one that doesn't push a POV, then that's where the link should go. And if it's not legally online elsewhere at a nonpartisan (or a partisan site for that viewpoint), then we just shouldn't have it. Certainly if the actual goal is to present a source with a critical viewpoint, there are plenty of other websites to offer.

The problem with mentioning non-Western ideas here is that you as a person with your own beliefs are trying to argue that they are related and thus diminishes the idea that having more than one personality is a mental disorder. In effect, you are promoting your own point of view in the article through your own original research, both of which go against Wikipedia policy. I note that one of your edits removed a sentence from someone arguing that the two are not related that didn't back up their own statement that they weren't, but neither can you put the info there implying that they are related without a source of your own.

If you think non-Western views are applicable here, then what you should do is quote or otherwise refer to and cite an actual outside source (i.e. not yourself, not just some website, but from a mainstream book or journal article) that makes the comparison between non-Western views and multiple personality disorder. (sorry, not signed in) 216.165.158.135 02:24, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your feedback. As far as the site it's hosted on, that particular article is part of a sub-section about legal controversy (how multiplicity has been viewed in the courts, etc). I believe the goal was to incorporate material on the controversial aspects of multiplicity as well. However, your point about the copyright is quite valid. I'm afraid I don't know where that article was reprinted from originally, so in the interest of not violating any copyright laws, I agree that it's proper to remove the link to the hosted version.

That article was sent to us by the author, requesting that we add it to our pages (using proper acknowledgements, of course. I should say this on the article itself). I've still got the emails. Therefore I am putting the link back in.

I'm also putting Astraea's Web back in. It was the first website to propose the idea of healthy multiplicity. It is a resource and controversy site and not a myspace. Most of the articles on it weren't even written by us. DreamGuy sources articles published in a magazine which he edits, in your articles on Jack the Ripper. Same thing. --Bluejay Young 16:03, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

I admit that the line between simply laying out sources, and laying out sources in such a way as to suggest they point towards one's preferred conclusion, can be quite easy to cross without realizing you're doing so. I'll be more careful about that in future.

The one outside citation the article currently has to an academic work on non-Western concepts of multiplicity is to Suryani and Jensen's book on trance possession. I'm still in search of published material which mentions multiplicity in the context of Afro-Caribbean religions involving trance and possession. The primary problem is that much of what I've heard and read about it is anecdotal evidence, never published in any kind of journal or report; it seems that many researchers are a bit wary of the topic of multiplicity after all the scandals and fraud which took place. --Sethrenn 09:11, 25 December 2006 (UTC)