Structural Dissociation Question

Hey Another question from the question bank over here

*trigger for defined roles, theories etc*
According to The theory of Structural Dissociation there's Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Dissociation, with Tertiary being DID. According to our T, DDNOS-1 has Secondary Dissocation. Is this correct?

So far I found this- I am looking for some answer but meanwhile this is related and somewhat interesting:
'The theory also suggests a host of treatment guidelines that cannot be elaborated here (see Steele, Van der Hart, & Nijenhuis, in press). Briefly, it indicates that the treatment of trauma-related disorders, including DID, involves integration of feared mental contents in ways that are adapted to the current integrative capacity of the patient. The treatment basically concerns resolution of the structural dissociation of the personality by exposing the dissociative parts of the personality, and their mental contents, to each other in carefully planned steps that promote integration and preclude re-dissociation. The theory predicts that overcoming tertiary dissociation in DID is less demanding than overcoming secondary dissociation. It also states that overcoming primary dissociation implies exposure to severe perceived threat, and thus requires the highest level of mental functioning.'

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okay I am craaayzy, I was so interested so I called my T to see what SHE knows/thinks.
she said what your T did, but was a bit reluctant, saying that also added that it's not agreed upon with all researchers and results in many people incorrectly diagnosed as not having DID. but she said I shouldn't be so curious bc. it is a deep well and 'RELAX', because 'you have DID' wtf??? I was about to go into explaining why I ask but gave up.

Thank you, that was very interesting indeed

Yup. We generally are very phobic of our other parts, parts that we fear, and it takes a lot of courage to turn and face them and hear what they have to say.

In my own case, when I first encountered two of my parts at age 16, I thought it was in that moment I broke and the break was forever. It did not occur to me until 30 years later that usually what breaks can be mended. It took me longer still to understand that I was already fragmented many years before that day at age 16. I have now read much of the technical literature on early childhood development and I tend to agree with the theorists who say DID is not a breakdown of the mind but rather a simple delay in the natural integration of naturally separate parts of the mind.

Many if not most children experience a developmental delay of some kind, and we know from experience that most of them can catch up. Often we can help them to catch up, but many children find ways to do this on their own.

No one starts out fully integrated. Integration is an ongoing product of development that everyone, multiples and singletons alike, takes a lifetime to achieve. We multiples just have a little bit farther to go.

I tend to agree with the theorists who say DID is not a breakdown of the mind but rather a simple delay in the natural integration of naturally separate parts of the mind.

could you point us in a direction there? I've not come across this theory so far.

Here are some author names:
Allan Schore
Daniel Stern

Thanks! Will look up.

I kind of like this idea: I'm not crazy, my brain is just immature

Una+ wrote:Yup. We generally are very phobic of our other parts, parts that we fear, and it takes a lot of courage to turn and face them and hear what they have to say.

In my own case, when I first encountered two of my parts at age 16, I thought it was in that moment I broke and the break was forever. It did not occur to me until 30 years later that usually what breaks can be mended. It took me longer still to understand that I was already fragmented many years before that day at age 16. I have now read much of the technical literature on early childhood development and I tend to agree with the theorists who say DID is not a breakdown of the mind but rather a simple delay in the natural integration of naturally separate parts of the mind.

Many if not most children experience a developmental delay of some kind, and we know from experience that most of them can catch up. Often we can help them to catch up, but many children find ways to do this on their own.

No one starts out fully integrated. Integration is an ongoing product of development that everyone, multiples and singletons alike, takes a lifetime to achieve. We multiples just have a little bit farther to go.

Oddly enough, I never told my uncle about me, but he had a very violent state of mind, connected to his first name, Luther. He was never called that at home, so at home he was fine, but at school he was never himself. He was Luther.
Anyways. He never saw it as DID. He only found out later, while studying the brain what dissociation was. He sees it in me, and made the connection between my own behavior and his. The outward signs being radically different behavior depending on the situation.
He noticed my rapidly changing interests and said that he thought it was like that of a middle schooler, who are learning themselves by branching out. He attributed the behavior to the fact that my whole life I was in fight or flight mode, and my mind saw this as unimportant until I was out of danger and comfortable. He says my mind is trying to find out who I am. Just figured this information would give some one some interesting food for thought.

I also heard some one once say that dissociation was more when you aren't fuzzy. When you're fuzzy, your more associated with the other parts of your psyche. Likewise, when you're clear minded, you are more dissociated from your other parts.
This makes sense. If you are looking from the self point of view. However, if you look from the world point of view, when you are fuzzy, you are dissociated from the world, while when you're clear minded you are more associated with the world and its workings.
Just some more interesting food for thought.

From the 2005 paper Phase-Oriented Treatment of Structural Dissociation in Complex Traumatization: Overcoming Trauma-Related Phobias by Steele et al:

Primary structural dissociation is a basic division of the personality into a single ANP and a single EP. It appears to characterize simple trauma-related disorders, including PTSD. We emphasize the word “structural,” because trauma-related dissociation does not occur at random but likely follows rather well-defined evolutionary prepared metaphorical “fault lines” in the structure of the personality, a view we develop below. More complex forms of structural dissociation, described below in terms of secondary and tertiary structural dissociation and involve wider ranges of dissociative parts, are variations on this primary structural dissociation of the personality.

The full article is available free on the web. See link below.

The idea is that these “fault lines” are the original boundaries of mental compartments that due to our natural history (our evolutionary and developmental biology) originate separately and fuse as we mature.

CiteSeerX: Phase-Oriented Treatment of Structural Dissociation in Complex Traumatization: Overcoming Trauma-Related Phobias

^ thanks for this article Una+. I had questions but they are gone, I'll come back later.