Difference between DID and MPD?

So, is there a difference between Dissociative Identity Disorder and Multiple Personality Disorder?

I read this http://www.dissociation.com/index/definition/ yesterday and it kinda makes sense.

From what I can gather, there are two types of distinctions:

Trauma before the age of 7
Original self splits in two- intellegent self hides emotional self and creates alters

Trauma after the age of 7
Original personality is still there
Alters are created to protect original personality

The way to tell, according to that link, is if you have ISH (for me that is Azel and he has told me from the start that he created the system and makes the splits) your original personality is in hiding. If you don't have an ISH, your original personality is still there but others are around to help you.

Does that make sense? It certainly explains why some have an alter they can hear in their head that helps them along and others don't.

The distinction between the two is not universally accepted, so it's not really official but I've read it in a few places. MPD and DID are the same thing according to the DSM. Yeah, like that book has all the answers! It absolutely doesn't. Dissociative disorders theory is still in its early stages. I think the comments on that web site about how MPD was changed into DID for the DSM was illuminating. Ultimately, these diagnostic categories are voted on and the debate on dissociative disorders were not 'won' by clearcut landslides. Diagnostic categories evolve over the years. They are not absolute reality. We individuals out here, our experiences are absolute reality.

I personally think the distinction makes some sense and I really like reading it because it's food for thought. At least the awareness that the age of the first division might matter to how things play out, very early divisions being different from much later ones. I don't know that's true but it sounds logical. I do favor listening to therapists who have dealt with a large number of multiples and who have noticed trends. The MPD/DID distinction suggests why some tend to have this ISH and others don't but who knows? Most non-DID people who can be hypnotized have a logical structure that sounds somewhat like my gatekeeper. This other talks about the social person in the third person.

In the website's discourse, my gatekeeper would be this ISH. I have an original child, age one, who was shunted off to protect him. So I assume that's the core, the seed, the original self, the center, whatever. The gatekeeper does speak of him as absolutely vital to the survival of the body although he speaks of one more as also necessary. But he's been off about some things so who knows and he started his whole way of being and thinking around age one (!) when he split off, so his system-knowledge is broad but not absolute. He's told me dispassionately when and how the first split happened, around age one.

It's easy at first to read the theories and try to fit your experience into them. You need to start somewhere. But it should be kept in mind they're all theories. I've read a lot of them and always found something way off for my situation. For example, I'm the host yet sustained massive abuse, which isn't "supposed" to happen according to some outlines. So I read them with some caution. Still, enough applies and you have to start making sense of this somehow. My thinking has evolved, based on what I read and what my alters tell me is true for them. Especially the latter.

The author of that web page is Ralph Allison. As he explains, he feels that he personally coined the term "multiple personality disorder" and he is attached to it and was insulted by the "academics" who argued to change it. So he offers an argument for retaining his term and using "dissociative identity disorder" for "lesser" cases. He is the only authority I have read who maintains this view. It has been repeated by some other authors who are not authorities.

The Allisonian fine distinction between MPD and DID has exactly the same flaw as the fine distinction between DID-like DDNOS and DID: it is unstable. It depends on clinical evidence that is always incomplete, highly subjective, and accumulates over time.

Well there is alot i dont know, much i have not read. I find it difficult, nor have desire, to fit into something that is written, some pre-formed mold of theory. Although i like to eat any meat i find n it and spit out the bones. I wish i could read something and say i fit perfectly n 2 it, maybe, only i havent yet.
One thing i dont believe is that a ISH can create a split. It is my understanding and reality that it is the torture, intense trauma, that is so intense 2 create a split. This is my truth at this moment anyway, though i am more than willing to b proven wrong, or agree to disagree. Blessings

Multiple Personality Disorder was renamed Dissociative Identity Disorder in 1994 by the American Psychiatric Association. Technically, there's no difference. And as far as I've heard, it was renamed because those with DID have a dissociative disorder and dissociate, and MPD made it sound like a personality disorder, like Borderline Personality Disorder is.

And I disagree with the cut-off age. We split when we were two. We had, originally, only the core and a protector. But now, we have over 100 alters. We have no true ISH, just many groups of alters struggling to maintain control. Also, all of our alters are capable of both logic and emotion.

Not to mention some of the old fashioned view points that author held, such as alters only being capable of one job and not being able to grow and change...

Remember, like Johnny-Jack said, DID is kind of a make your own disorder. No matter how logical a theory seems, it still won't apply to every system. They're all pretty unique.
~Rage

Exceptional wrote:One thing i dont believe is that a ISH can create a split. It is my understanding and reality that it is the torture, intense trauma, that is so intense 2 create a split. This is my truth at this moment anyway, though i am more than willing to b proven wrong, or agree to disagree. Blessings

I have never been one to follow/fully believe what is written but it does help me when I read things like this to use what I can and make sense of it all. Like you, I take what I need and leave the rest.

I can't say everyone's systems are the same of course, but I can tell you the first time that I met my ISH.

*** May Trigger if you are sensitive****

I was 15 and suicidal. My mother had finally kicked my father out and had a restraining order against him for physically abusing her. I was going through a major episode of PSTD. I was depressed and ready to end it all. One night as I lay writting my suicide notes, an angel appeared and spoke to me. Azel later explained he appeared out of body as an angel because that was the only way he knew to reach me.

He told me is name was Michael and that I could commit suicide. To tell Mother one more time of what Father had done. After two weeks of him coming to me I got the courage and told her. It didn't go well and she moved out of the house after threats were made that she was going to send me to live with him.

A few days after she left I went into the bathroom with a knife. He appeared to me again. He told me I couldn't do it and that if I wanted he could end the pain. That all suicide is is a cry for the pain to end. That if I trusted him, he would make the pain end.

After that I was not suicidal.

I could always remember that part. I could never remember what happened to make the pain end. It is only after another attempt after openning Pandora's box of memories that I can remember what happened. He led me to my room and I did a ritual of sorts. I don't think that is the right word but it is the only one I have. As I did it, I could remember doing that at 12, at 14 too.

He took me (at the time I was Jill- she was host/self/shell) and split us into two. Alice was placed at the bottom of a wishing well and Jill went inside. A new host was made.

****End Trigger****

These are things I could never talk about in real life but I assure you I know them to be true. I would swear on the lives of my children and on my own life.

These are things I could never talk about in real life but I assure you I know them to be true. I would swear on the lives of my children and on my own life.

I know you've seen by now that no one doubts you here. Most of us have had such experiences of things happening that we know were true for us but which an average person in the world would not understand or believe or want to hear. Too bad for them because our experiences say something incredible about the human mind.

I like that strain of thought, take what you need and leave the rest. In order for me to take what I need, I sometimes kind of imbue myself with the new information or theory, roll it around and "believe" it for a while until the parts that make things clearer for me sink in and the parts that don't can drift away. In particular, I don't know what I would have made of the Sphinx had I not read so many biographies and other writings which included such a structure or alter as a gatekeeper or internal self helper. He isn't the same as Azel obviously but there are enough parallels to help me make useful distinctions.

I don't know if I mentioned this in any thread you may have read but I recall knowing that I had a guardian angel quite young. I remember specifically lying in my bed being calmed hearing his voice, knowing he was there. I now realize that it was the Sphinx speaking to me, reassuringly, that things would be okay, that these events will pass. I'm looking forward to a time when my memory comes back so I can remember some of these wonderful communications.

Edited by Mod

Edited by Mod

Is there really any need to insult the people on this forum? You are entitled to believe whatever you like. But if you don't feel able to be supportive of people who have this condition then perhaps you shouldn't post here.

As far as I knew, the biggest difference between MPD and DID is the name - I thought that DID was the name-changed, updated-with-new-knowledge version of MPD.

If I am understanding what the article writer is saying, then I disagree with a lot of what he's written. From my own experience, his definitions aren't quite correct. Our first split happened at 3 years old, yet we have an ISH. He goes into further detail about MPD later on, saying that to have it, a person must have had life-threatening trauma before age 7, had to be highly hypnotisable, had one "good" and one abusive parent, and been the only of all the siblings to be abused. He seems to say that you simply can not have DID if it starts before you are 7.

Again, from my own experience, these things don't make sense. I/we did split before age 7 - that's for sure. Both my parents were equally loving, and equally good at making honest mistakes. They cared for me and my siblings equally. My siblings (particularly sister) were all abused, as I was, and by the same person.

Then there's what he says an ISH is (in spoilers to take up less space):

[spoiler]

Characteristics of the Inner Self Helper (ISH)

A. Prime Directive of the ISH is to keep patient alive until her Life Plan is completed and fulfilled. The ISH will prevent suicide in any way possible.

B. Has no date of origin; has always been present.

C. Can only agape love; is incapable of hatred.

D. Has awareness of and belief in "The Creator."

E. Is aware that the Celestial Intelligent Energy (CIE) put her in charge of teaching this person how to live and move forward properly.

F. Is able to work on the inside of the patient's mind, as co-therapist, while the human therapist works on the outside.

G. Knows all about history of patient and can predict short term future.

H. Possesses no personal sense of gender identity, but will assume either gender the therapist is comfortable with.

I. Talks intellectually instead of emotionally, carefully chooses precise words, speaks in short concise sentences; prefers to answer questions; gives enigmatic instructions. ("Teach her humility today.")

J. Avoids using slang; does not have the capacity for put-downs or guilt-trips.

K. Is aware of patient's past lifetimes.

[/spoiler]

Many ISH's that I know or know of have a great deal of knowledge about the whole system and the life the "person" has had. Many also speak intellectually and are careful about what words and sentences they say. According to the author, ISHs are angels, placed by G*d/"The Creator" in the person to help them get through life. Now, while I wouldn't dare say that no ISH is an angel, mine is not, and none of my multiple friends have mentioned having an ISH that is an angel. Also, how does this work for a system where the ISH is atheist? Many ISH's that I know do have a preferred gender, and it's not whatever the T prefers them to be. I don't know how it is for others, but my ISH can hate, can put people down and guilt-trip people, but chooses not to. Myself and my ISH both believe in an afterlife, but not reincarnation - so how would K apply to us, and others with the same/similar belief?