Just a vent about misinformation at Uni

Hello there.

We just wanted to vent really quickly about how our university handles the topics of dissociative disorders and things that directly connect to them cause we sort of had enough.

We're in Europe, in a pretty high-ranked uni and we're in our second year in our Psychology bachelor.
Last year we've had a Clinical Psychology course, for which we were pretty excited since we do like the topic and we were pretty fixated on it some time ago also cause of our ASD. Didn't have expectations that high, but we were happy to study something that was so natural to us.
The day came in which a professor talked about dissociative disorders. Started defining dissociation, then calls DID a "multiple personality disorder", then starts saying basically nothing really except that it's a strange condition and it's not yet been researched that much cause it's possible it's not real and it's "culture (media) based". I (we) go up to him and ask him if he ever considered Structural Dissociation as a theory, he asks me what that is and I tell him what I could at the moment, not being that prepared and honestly still holding quite a bit of social anxiety. He tells me that's based on very abstract ideas, so I ask him about fMRI studies made on subjects with DID. Tells me that fMRI studies are easy to misinterpret, so I give up and walk away.
I read the Clinical Psychology book for the exam, and the first thing that catches my eye is the story of Sybil just put there as a "perfect example of DID". Then I read that the book describes it as a disorder that is different in every culture and that it's possibly all media-based, then describes a study in which researchers "proved" that amnesia between parts is not really a thing since priming is still present for all the parts (if you don't know what priming is you can just google it cause it's a pretty basic phenomena). Get pretty angry, go an read the mentioned study and proceed to get even more angry for the lack of logic present in the conclusions, in my point of view.

Fast forward to this year (second), and another professor starts talking about repressed memories. Tells students (and puts on a slide) that repressed memories are not a thing and that there's no evidence to back them up. Also proceeds to define them as false memories. Go up to her, ask her if she read about the growing body of evidence that actually is supporting the fact that trauma memories are suppressed and then remembered later in life in many people with childhood trauma. Tells me she didn't hear about that, but seems to listen. Don't know if she took that out of the slide and honestly don't want to know.
Today, I'm listening to a lecture of one of the most famous psychology researchers (from what I've seen since he publishes a lot of articles) from the country I'm in. Proceeds to talk about multiple personality disorder as a disorder that's only been discovered in the late 20th century and that it's interesting but now the interest for it has gone down, then talks about the fact that he doesn't want to call it fake (and he didn't mean to, I'm pretty sure it wasn't done with any bad intention), but that if multiple personalities exist, it's still a weird phenomena that has much to do with the media and how society views mental health issues as something to sensationalise and consequently researchers are suddenly all about it and diagnosing it to then lose interest and not think about it anymore, which is very far from the truth.

We're just tired. Extremely. Don't know if it's just this country, but I really doubt it since it's one of the most advanced in the psychological field. It's just really frustrating.

Edit: Forgot something before we continue to study for an exam tomorrow.

It's extremely sad that all the students in my course (and possibly from past years) all think of Dissociative Identity Disorder now as something to joke about, and something to not take seriously because "it's probably all in someone's head" or "it's just in the movies". It really angers me the nonchalance with which professionals discard something without even evidently having researched about that in the last years. Reading books in not that difficult, and reading articles even less so. Things that professors say are often taken for granted, so it will be extremely difficult to now change the minds of the students that listened to this stuff before even researching the topic. And it's more than 500 students in one go.
It's just really sad.

Sad is the word for it and I'm really sorry for you that you've had to deal with that level of ignorance. Unless you're a specialist, it's often the case that information that is very well known to those directly working in the area while it's still entirely unknown to everyone else. New information can spread very slowly -- the opposite of a virus!

This is why most medical professionals need to attend trainings regularly to maintain their credentials. If they rely only on what they learned 10 or god-forbid 20 years ago, they can end up committing malpractice. Psychotherapists are not usually in that group -- or at least new findings about DID aren't always included in a comprehensive way.

I had an older therapist a few years ago who exclusively treated DID. She hadn't heard the phrase "theory of structural dissociation" and I was shocked. But they I realized she had all the life experience necessary to treat me and she retired soon after anyway. A lot of her method of treating was incredibly intuitive. She somehow interacted successfully with alters of ages all over the spectrum. If she hadn't read the latest books, she didn't have any misconceptions about DID.

This does nothing for you now but more recent research about DID is spreading. You might consider writing to an author of a textbook or article whose information is no longer valid in places. I've done that along with links to current literature that would inform them about the errors. A competent researcher will care and read these. I don't think I've ever checked to see if new editions of the works have updated information. Mostly because I forget what I did, but if I did check and found nothing had changed, I know I'd be livid.

If supressed memory isn't a thing then how comes when adults experience traumatic events the brain blocks it out and they experience flashbacks?

Psychiatry can't have it both ways.

They can't say "adults can block out trauma, experience dissociative fugue etc but when a child experiences intense trauma it's all ok, the child remembers everything and it has no adverse consequences including creation of seperate facets of the brain to deal with life" Because that's what they're saying.

On the one hand they're saying "oh yeah if there's trauma you block bits out as an adult but no children don't do that"

They can kiss all our asses as far as I am concerned. This is why I don't trust head doctors.

Thank you both for your replies, I would have liked to thank you sooner.

Johnny-Jack, I agree with you that majority of professionals need training first to fully understand how to deal with DID/OSDD. I'm still shocked by the fact that still being in such a high-ranked university, they don't seem to bother checking on their sources of information.
I would like to indeed write this to someone, but we are waiting to finish our thesis on dissociative disorders. That way, we'll have the information we need to argue with the professors' choices in regards to this.
We also had a psychologist that had very outdated information about DID and other disorders. We figured it was because she probably didn't update her knowledge from when she was still at university 30 years ago. Despite that, it's relieving to know that even though some therapists do not have a full knowledge of the disorder, they still manage to help their clients like yours did and like ours is doing now.

Sarandipity, I agree. They often talk about adult trauma memories being foggy or not 100% accurate and are okay with that, but at the same time refuse to think that a child (or anyone, really) cannot remember their trauma from an early age. I wouldn't go so far as to say that I don't trust doctors, but I get your point.

Nico

Psychologist student here too, I know the struggle.

In fact, I've done my whole 3rd year project about DID and schizophrenia because of a mild argument with a teacher. From what I've heard, there's more people than the professor who was supposed to correct it who read it. I still don't know if it's a good thing for me, but eh...

I also talk a lot about DID with other students, quoting studies (specially Reinders' ones, you should look at her 2003, 2012 and 2016 studies (2016 one was directed by Vissia)) and the ISSTD Guidelines as sources. I'm starting to know all of their names by heart at this point...

It wasn't easy at all at first, but now I'm pretty used to it and always ready to give my speech about DID into terms that everyone can understand not matter if they are more into neuro, cognitive or psychoanalytic. But it took me two years, a lot of failure and a loooot of time thinking about it before being able to organize everything into something coherent, that I could deliver even when I'm half-paralyzed by my social anxiety.

The issue with uni professors is that they are specialists and make researches into ONE field and know almost nothing in other ones ; also they aren't always making courses in the field they are specialized in, and some of them feel free to talk or improvise about things they don't know well enough.

But depending on where you live and the field your professors work in, some of them will know about dissociation and dissociative disorders. My supervisor for one of my uni project even spend 20min renting about how a psychiatrist misdiagnosed one of his patient with schizophrenia just because she had dissociative symptoms (which were totally justified by the trauma the woman lived just two months before).
Another one of my supervisors was super-excited when I talk to her about my DID vs Schizophrenia project.

Not all professors and students are hostile to DID. Some of them are just misinformed and ready to listen if you find the right way to approach them. In fact, all the students I've worked with were all pretty curious about DID once I had talked about the 500+ studies that validate its existence (I also check Pubmed from time to time to have really recent studies to talk about, even if it's just to be able to say "4 studies about DID have been made since the beginning of this year, and 12 last year"), and asked me a tone of questions. The ones who are really into psychology quickly get how this disorder shows the extreme of what a brain can do and how it works, and why it's so important to know about it, because you can link it to pretty much everything in psychology.

Also, I had to give up the Structural Dissociation Theory terms, it's too complex to be explainable to someone who doesn't know anything about dissociation. I've noticed that most of the people get suspicious just because of that.

Instead, I tell them that when an abusive situation happen, the dissociation isolate the memories, put it aside of the normal memory like a "memory island" which has its own neuronal pathway, and this can lead to traumatic amnesia. Then, if another abusive event happen, if it's the same kind as the previous one, the dissociation will put it on the same island and the island will grow bigger ; if it's another kind, it can create a new island for it.
So the more the child will be abused, the more the dissociation will store memories in those islands, isolate them and reinforce their specific neuronal pathways. If it started early enough, happened often enough and lasted long enough, you will reach the point that everything will look like multiple small memories instead of a big one. And as we know that the autobiographical identity and sense of self is linked to the memories available, it makes sense that DID imply multiple identities as the memory is completely dissociated.

With the ones who like psychoanalysis, I talk about the dissociation as a super-repression thing, who can lead to the co-existence of multiple ego with their own super-ego (I use more details and explanations, but I don't know how to talk about it in English, sorry...). They usually drown me with questions at this point. Psychoanalytic isn't great to treat DID, but gosh, the ones who are into it are usually the most interested into dissociation and DID (and all my teachers who acknowledge traumatic dissociation and dissociative disorders are into psychoanalytic ).

Those explanations are not exactly true, I know, but usually, it's simple enough to make it looks like something not too hard to understand and encourage them to learn more about DID.

And yeah, it can be really, really frustrating to see how misinformed people can be, when they are supposed to teach us... this frustration is the reason why I started to translate English resources about DID into French

But truth is : DID isn't the only disorder who suffer from this. Autism, OCD, schizophrenia, psychopath, BPD etc. depending on the specialization of the professor, who can hear really awful things. For example, I've had a professor who told us that BPD doesn't exist...

Psychology is way too complex to allow everyone to know everything about every disorder. There will always be misconceptions, it's sadly how things works. All we can do is to educate others about the disorders we know, and try to not assume too many things about the ones we don't.

just a vent for around the world!

the gap between on how the state and private sectors see and understand our symptoms with the dsm book is why those with it and those that don't are so spread out in the world. My latest Doctor work with me in the definition of words.
1. schizophrenia = splinter mind {how he explaned to me}
2. chemical inbalance = my mind is war torn from all the abuse.

with these 2 definitions I was able to get on the meds that are finialy helping me to push through the truama without collapsing in on our selves. Just by agreinig to the definition ono their word choice helped me in the long run.

I may not agree with the system but I need to heal first with help then join the wagon for social change towards DID.

Good luck and stay strong the more of us that heal inspite of public opionion the more that can work to change their veiw!

I can only second your despair regarding the teaching of psychology. Here in France the teaching is all about psycho-analysis and psychology students have a hard time finding something else to be taught. Finding a therapist - rather than a psychanalyst - is close to impossible. A lot of medical doctors -including very young ones- still believe that "autism is a made-up condition" therefore we gave up the idea of talking about being multiple. Reading here on the forum and talking with other systems outside of the forum, has proven way more helpful than years of psycho-analysis.

I guess that for us systems we need to do the same thing that the autistic community does: self-advocacy, and creating our own ressources according to our needs.

-David-