A killer claims he is innocent because his ‘alter ego’ did it. A woman tells a psychiatric conference more than 180 different personalities inhabit her. If these reports are true, then the human mind is – astonishingly – able to host not just oneself but many.
The 19th–century thinker William James argued that the stream of consciousness glues together our sense of self. Is it possible that, under certain circumstances, the ‘ glue’ could disintegrate and allow two or more selves to inhabit the same mind? Some psychiatrists think so and label the resulting bizarre restate multiple personality disorder; others see it as a fake or delusion. But before examining the arguments, consider the classic case of ‘Julia.’
During therapy, Julia described how she had been ‘ losing’ chunks of time since she was a child. She once came around in an unfamiliar classroom and could not account for the last two years. Another time, she found herself in a seedy bar talking to a man who seemed to know her much better than she knew him. It emerged that during the ‘lost’ periods, Julia had been displaced by one of her other selves, and these alternative personalities began to take shape. Among them was George, the burly protector; Joanne, the playful 12-year-old; Sandi, the terrified four-year-old; and Elizabeth, the administrator, who kept some order among the other personalities. In all, Julia had nearly 100 selves.
As therapy progressed, it seemed that a childhood of extreme physical and sexual abuse had caused the splits in Julia’s personality. Julia had contained her memories of trauma by dividing them among a cast of characters; through therapy, she was apparently able to make herself whole again.
Products of therapy?
But can the self really disintegrate under such pressure, or are multiple personalities just a product of therapy itself, as patients respond to the suggestions of their counselors? It is certainly a fact that there had been very few reports of multiple personalities until 1973, when the best-selling book Sybil related the story of a woman with 16 alter egos. Rates of diagnosis rocketed after its publication, leading doubters to say that this was proof of an imagined syndrome. But those who believe the syndrome is read say that it only shows that therapists now know what to look for.
It is also a fact that there is a consistent pattern to the disorder, which lends weight to the opinion that the multiple personalities are real. Sufferers tend to have a high IQ; there are usually recognizable types among the alter egos, and behind practically every case, they rely on a tale of extreme and prolonged childhood abuse. Importantly, the abuse has to happen during early childhood – trauma, even in the teenage years, does not produce the disorder.
Are you open to suggestions?
It is possible that children who have still-growing brains and incompletely integrated personalities could be prone to deep-rooted splits in which alternative selves grab a share of the same brain. While doubters concede that most sufferers have been abused, they argue that this fact is significant only because it leads them to seek therapy. Once in therapy, their unstable mental health makes them vulnerable to suggestions. The doubters add that people with multiple personalities almost always score very high for hypnotisability. It could be that the hypnosis routinely used to get to the cause of the symptoms is, in fact, producing them.
It is probably too extreme to claim that all multiple personalities are produced on the therapist’s couch. However, people who are highly hypnotisable and who thus can dissociate (to separate themselves from reality) might be expected to use this skill to escape genuine abuse during childhood. The therapy may contribute to an elaboration of the personalities, but the initial splitting – the act of dissociation – probably takes place at the moment of abuse, just as the sufferer reports.
