I thought this was interesting. (Article)

I'm currently doing a research paper on DID controversy for my English class. We were tasked to research something in our field (nursing) and it had to be controversial. DID was obviously the first thing that came to my mind.

Searching for citations, I came upon this: http://www.astraeasweb.net/plural/allison.html
That website is an excerpt of this website, in case anyone is interested in reading more: http://www.dissociation.com/


With this belief system, the teachers could not agree that MPD could be an accurate label for anyone. The treaters on the committee did not know how to explain that, in practice if not in theory, their patients acted as if they had other personalities. The teachers decided that the patients had the major mental problem of believing that they had more than one personality. The goal of therapy should not be integrating the various personalities, but getting the patients over their false belief (delusion) that they had other personalities at all. (Since I was not present for the deliberation, these ideas are only reasonable conclusions from what I heard from others who were there and position statements published about the debate.)

So the patients still had a problem, but it was redefined as a different problem than the one their therapists were treating them for. Instead of therapists trying to integrate "alters" into an original personality, they should now focus their attention on the patients "delusion" that they did not have a single identity. Now the teachers expected the treaters to treat the patients' "identity disorder," as no one could really have multiple personalities.

This states that MPD was changed to DID (in the DSM) because no one can have multiple personalities in one body. So, technically, DID treatment is supposed to be treating our 'delusion' of MPD. Weird to think about, in that respect.

What's even better is this paragraph: However, the editors of the ICD did not accept DSM IV as their section on Mental Disorders. In the newest printing of ICD-9, they did add "Dissociative Identity Disorder" below MPD as a synonym. So, in the world outside the USA, MPD still exists. Only in the USA have all multiples been told they have a false belief that they have alters running their bodies.

I'm not a fan of the use 'all' since my T certainly believes in alters and hasn't told me they are a false belief.

Anywho, just a pretty interesting article. I wanted to add something useful to the board, so I hope this is useful.

Much of that article is junk, frankly. I have read it before.

The most interesting controversies surrounding DID that I know of are:

1) Is it psychological or spiritual?
2) Is best treatment to empower a "preferred" identity and suppress the others, or deal with all the identities collectively?
3) Is it (ever) iatrogenic?

Una+ wrote:Much of that article is junk, frankly. I have read it before.

The most interesting controversies surrounding DID that I know of are:

1) Is it psychological or spiritual?
2) Is best treatment to empower a "preferred" identity and suppress the others, or deal with all the identities collectively?
3) Is it (ever) iatrogenic?

My paper is if DID is iatrogenic, but that was one of the websites that popped up when I googled 'controversy in DID' at the beginning of my research (before I knew exactly what my thesis was going to be).

I'm glad it's junk. I found it an interesting thought though, since I've never really understood why the change happened in the DSM. I've always heard it's because of the negative images people get when you say MPD, but, really, I've had to explain DID to my friends as MPD because that's all they knew. Dissociative Identity Disorder had no meaning for them.

To explain 'Dissociation' to them was a challenge, considering everyone dissociates to some extent and my friends didn't see anything wrong with it, even when I started explaining the extreme extent in which I would dissociate. I'd always get 'yeah, I do that to, so I have this DID also?' Even 'Identity' was hard to explain, considering the definition of identity is 'the sense of self, providing sameness and continuity in personality over time and sometimes disturbed in mental illnesses, as schizophrenia'. I was asked 'so, it's like schizophrenia, then?'. Uh...not really. Then, I had one of my friends say 'a personality changes all the time, thus your identity changes as well. No real problem there.' He sort of had a point, given the definition of the term 'identity'.

Multiple Personality Disorder pretty much says it all; one person has multiple personalities.

Long story short, I found it interesting because I didn't understand why MPD was changed in the first place. Sorry for rambling.

I read somewhere that it was changed from multiple personality disorder to DID because people were assuming it was a personality disorder much like BPD or narcissitic PD or anti social PD when really it is part of the dissociation disorders.

Bourbon

Bourbon, what you said was definitely a large factor in the discussion. The whole study of MPD/DID as well as the diagnosis is still in comparative infancy, or maybe early adolescence. To me, the accuracy of the DSM for MPD/DID has been closer to voodoo than science. All right, that was extreme but you get what I'm saying. No doubt the problem has been with DDNOS/DID itself, a condition that by its very nature precludes detection, disclosure and easy study. The future awareness and description of DDNOS/DID in the DSM has nowhere to go but up.

They are only labels, so they are subject to change.
It does not change the underlying thing.

There does not seem to be any major change to the DID criteria in the DSM-5, but there is a summary definition of dissociation which was lacking and some rearrangement of the other dissociation disorders.

Here is an article that talks about dissociation and the theories behind:
http://www.dsm5.org/Documents/Anxiety,% ... orders.pdf

Thanks for the article! And the responses. I understand it's a label that needs a lot of work. I'm interested in seeing what the DSM 5 states when it's finalized. Once I get a chance (I'm at school now) I'll definitely give it a read. Perhaps I can use something in there for my paper.

^^
They touch on the iatrogenic factor, in the differential with psychosis.