Talk:Dissociative identity disorder

FFS: it's a hysterical conversion disorder and there have been a number of cases. It is *NOT* a psychosis. Spica the Hiver  If you tolerate this, then your children will be next... 18:09, 23 June 2008 (EDT)
 * That's why we have you here, Spica :) 18:15, 23 June 2008 (EDT)
 * I nursed a case of this in a private psych hospital at the start of my career. Weird, man, just loads of weird shit, all the time.... Going back to watching SAC:GITS:2nd Gig now :) Spica the Hiver  If you tolerate this, then your children will be next... 18:21, 23 June 2008 (EDT)

Can we move this stuff to Dissociative identity disorder? — Haamer (talk) 15:02, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Thank you. — Haamer (talk) 18:06, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

MPD is FBS.
I'm pretty sure it's just people putting on voices or otherwise being batshit insane and using MPD as an excuse. IDD is different to MPD, so it's unfortunate MPD forwards here. MPD is fucking woo, from what I've read, and has been time and time again disproven, what little evidence it exists is whimsical and by no means empirical or in any reputable journal.

I am honestly disappointed as a long time reader of this wiki to see claims it's real.
 * Hi, as someone whose significant other suffers from DID (MPD and DID were formerly separate definitions that varied, basically, only by what the original disorder trigger conditions were and what psychology thought the mind was doing during that event), I'm pretty sure you're wrong. And making it into an attention-whore situation or shaming the victim is really bad form, BoN. My sweetie's others (as we nickname the other living personalities) are distinct identities have their own personalities, likes, dislikes, and demeanors. I'm disappointed in you being a dick, BoN. Ochotonaprincepsnot a pokémon 20:26, 15 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Hi, I spent five years working in inpatient psych, and only met three patients who claimed to have DID and were actually diagnosed with it. (Several others claimed it but after evaluation were not diagnosed, for whatever that's worth.) Of those three, the first one I had my doubts about, but her diagnosing psychiatrist was, like me, a strong DID sceptic and still diagnosed her, which is pretty persuasive stuff. Once you've actually seen someone change alters —
 * Well, put it this way: I was, as you are, a firm disbeliever in DID before I met a woman I'll call Helga. Her "main" alter spoke Russian, not natively but more fluently than I did, and we conversed in that language. She changed to a different alter that could not speak or understand Russian beyond a few words that anyone might pick up along the way from media, like "spasibo" and "do svidaniya". Repeated "tricks" confirmed that Russian had become an alien language to her. Also, her English-speaking alter was entirely left-handed and the other was entirely right-handed. There was much more to it, but space forbids. This is empirical evidence. Anecdotal, but still empirical. Empirical evidence is not easy to handwave away, and I realised that my attempts to do so in her case were requiring more and more contrived and implausible explanations. So I confessed to myself that I'd been acting like a denialist rather than a sceptic, and I let Occam's Razor fall.
 * What does my experience lead me to conclude? (1) DID does in fact exist. (2) DID is quite rare. (3) Yes, some people do "fake" it, or else convince themselves that they have it, which isn't quite the same thing. (4) People who are faking it have very definite tells and are quite easy to pick up on. DID is like seizures — it's a popular target for malingerers who overestimate their skill, but conning an experienced observer who doesn't want to be conned, for any meaningful length of time, is essentially impossible. (Self-deluded "DID" has different and subtler tells, but is still easily spotted.)


 * Thanks for your completely unfounded, sourceless anecdote, Mr. Didn't Leave His Name. Unfortunately, basically everything contradicts basic fundamentals of psychiatry and neurology. Also, to the previous poster, just because you have a significant other who is a crazy person pretending to have several personalities to feel special doesn't give you either authority or evidence, the same way that a person saying they are Napoleon isn't gonna be correct because "hey, they know themselves better than anyone else." Crazy people do and say crazy things. And as a significant other of someone like that, you aren't more qualified to talk about this topic - you are less qualified, because you have a heavily weighted interest in having your significant other suffer from an actual condition rather than just being an attention whore. Nara (talk) 15:51, 18 August 2018 (UTC)


 * Congrats on replying to a post from three years ago, and then ridiculing someone's post from five years ago. I'm sure your opinion went back through time and stopped them cold, so that now this entire thread is a time paradox. 15:59, 18 August 2018 (UTC)


 * FYI: My former spouse was diagnosed with MPD. I don't pretend to be an expert in such matters, but I do know that something previously very well hidden away emerged from within her and within a relatively short period of time the woman I had loved and lived with for many years apparently ceased to exist. Her doctors informed me of this, and one of them told me, "The woman you met, dated, and married back then isn't there anymore, may never really have been more than a sort of compromise, and the chances of her ever coming back are slim to none. You should get out while you can." I chose to disregard his advice. By the time I realised that he'd been right and got the hell out of Dodge, I was a complete wreck. It took me about 5 years--including a couple of years of counselling--to recover. I'm not interested in sharing any more of that part of my past with you, but for an idea of something similar to what I suspect I was up against, I suggest you read When Rabbit Howls. Zontar (talk) 02:06, 6 February 2019 (UTC)


 * Hi, I'm a member of the plural community. We don't deny that many people with DID develop the condition through childhood trauma. In fact, most people who developed plurality through reasons besides childhood trauma aren't considered to have DID. Also, I don't take kindly to the person calling disordered people "batshit insane" and "crazy" would like to say that I sincerely hope that's not the kind of person welcome on this site. Ableism should not be welcome in a place meant to dispel ignorance. &mdash; Unsigned, by: 108.6.23.172 / talk
 * The edit in question was made by a drive by poster eight years ago. Said poster made no other edits since then and does not appear to have been well received then or now. Also I really don't understand why people keep replying to an edit from 2012. They can't hear you and no one since seems to agree with them. What then is the problem? 00:21, 30 March 2020 (UTC)
 * People (named or numbers) come to RW in general and 'this article in particular' at various times, so there may well be sudden revivals of interest/activity (and there is a certain pleasure in adding to a talk page several years after the last comment). Anna Livia (talk) 12:37, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Statements by DSM IV Chair receiving more attention
Given the more recent attention (mostly within the plural community) on Allen J Frances' statements about DID (him explicitly trying to get MPD removed from the DSM, and that DID was framed as it was to "reduce the popularity of MPD and inspire caution in its diagnosis" because he couldn't just get it removed), perhaps some revision to the controversies section would be warrented, to mention these aspects? If not controversies then at least somewhere.2601:989:C100:E480:476:5EA0:607E:9C25 (talk) 08:09, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

The ISSTD is corrupt and this article is trash
Very disappointing to see Rational Wiki buy into this stuff. The cited sources that say it is real is the exact problem on why this crap is even in the DSM-V. If you just google any name on these papers and also "ISSTD" (International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation) you'll see that every single name is associated with this organization. The names on this list are winning ISSTD awards, going to ISSTD conferences and seminars, and some serve as chairs or associates or even founders of the ISSTD. This "society" seems great right? Raises awareness right? Except that this is the organization that made it up in the early '80s in the first place and campaigned for the inclusion in the DSMIII. It was renamed Dissociative Identity Disorder to make it more palatable and seem more legit by the DSM IV. The sickness is created by the ISSTD and then cured by the ISSTD. It's constantly running a scam and practicing bad medicine and bad science.

Also what they don't tell you is this diagnosis is only an arm of the trifecta of BS of repressed memories aaaaand ritual abuse (or sometimes they let it out as Satanic ritual abuse with certain patients). Repressed memories are bunk and this is widely debated and publicly it's mostly favored as junk science. The satanic ritual abuse though is only said outloud between ISSTD doctors but sometimes it'll come up at ISSTD conferences.

The people who created the ISSTD were also instrumental in the Satanic Panic of the '80s and early '90s. They kind of hushed that up when MPD was renamed to DID. You can still find cases of this being spoken about with founders like Bennett Braun, Frank Putnam, Richard Kluft, David Caul, and Colin Ross. These people have no business practicing medicine and Bennett Braun seems to be hit with malpractice suit after malpractice suit, even one last year. David Caul famously helped get Billy Millgan out of rape and murder charges because his other personalities did it. The rest of these doctors can be easily googled to see the messes they have made, even in places besides Grey Faction. The whole diagnosis was created by charlatans and people who practice junk science. Besides therapists coaxing patients to think they have dissociative identity disorder, repressed memories of child abuse, or having a whole cult of their family and neighbors making them get involved in ritual sacrifice, the biggest sadness is that the people subjected to this stuff have a mental disorder and were looking for help. It's only exacerbated by any therapist looking to give this diagnosis. It ruins lives. Not to mention all of these charlatans testifying as expert witnesses in a lot of court cases in the '80s to then start putting people in jail for baseless allegations during the satanic panic.

These are things our society still has not reckoned with. These people have never been stopped. You'll see why it's a problem when source 8 cited here is a research paper by Sima Chalavi with a grant from David Caul through the ISSTD. Again the creators are the funders and the predators.

The amount of stuff you have to unpack to see how this web works is aggravating. Considering how Rational Wiki pokes holes in junk science on pretty much all other pages on this site, this should reflect the tone of greyfaction.org. All of the sources are there, it would be nice if someone from there took over this article. I'm not doing it though, I don't know how to wiki. This just REALLY needs to be on the talk page so maybe someone more versed can run with it.

So this leads to the problem of the DSM legitimizing it. This is why DID is even taken seriously in the first place because people can just point to the DSM. However Bennett Braun, Frank Putnam, Richard Kluft, and others were part of the the task force to get MPD into the DSM III-R. After such started to become more and more embroiled in controversy, the torch was then carried on by David Spiegel for the DSM-IV. I can't find the names of Spiegel's full task force, but one that sticks out is Etzel Cardeña, who "has said that there is evidence for telepathy, psychokinesis and precognition and that he himself has had experiences that could be interpreted as supporting the psi hypothesis". And at the same time Spiegel is still buddies with Braun and the ilk at the ISSTD (then named ISSMP&D) and also wrote in their newsletter as well.

David Spiegel is key here. He is the only one who is not a formal member of the ISSTD, not a founder, and has completely kept his hands clean of things typical of ISSTD heads: malpractice, satanism, alien abduction, CIA mind control, and raping their patients (as in the case of ISSTD's George B. Greaves PhD). You know, stuff Rational wiki usually mocks. He is friends with all of these people and will publicly defend them (see here: https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/speak-memory) David Spiegel is employed by Stanford and all roads lead to him. By proxy he is the one affirming what his snake oil selling friends do with the APA. Without Spiegel this wouldn't be in the DSM anymore. There is a major conflict of interest here. It would be nice to find the names of rest of his task force for dissociative disorders in both the DSM-IV and V. As I said, besides Etzel Cardena, as far as I know these have not been made public. I'm sure you would not find good news there and I have no doubt you would find some of the people on this list: https://greyfaction.org/resources/proponents/who/

Strangely enough David Spiegel is the son of Herbert Spiegel, one of "Sybil's" doctors who blew the lid off the hoax. He was outspoken against this MPD junk science and diverged with his son on this matter. I bring up Spiegel because no one really talks about him even though his name comes up a lot. Hopefully as more people better equipped than me research this stuff, they might find something astray with this guy.

The way the DID diagnosis comes up is very much the way the newer Chronic Lyme Disease cult works. You ONLY want an ISSTD therapist or someone trained by the ISSTD. These therapists are either already quacks or tend to look for things that aren't there. Either motive leads to the power of suggestion. Behind most of the these DID cases you will find a therapist. Then you typically find out that therapist also tends to diagnose their other patients with MPD, repressed memory, or if they are the worst, start talking to them about Satan possessing all their loved ones. Maybe some have pure intentions but it's not okay. This is why you have the ISSTD making up percentages that DID is not rare and far more prevalent than thought before. The 1.5-2% of all people is an insanely large number. So then it's no longer suspect if these ISSTD therapists diagnose a large amount of patients because they are experts at it so they would know right? A choice quote from Herbert Spiegel: "Once the Sybil story took off it stirred the interests of a, of a number of therapists to establish training institutes where they attracted therapists to come along to learn how to "diagnose" translated meaning how to train people to become multiples. They called them hospitals, but I would refer to them as training institutes for multiple personality. They not only trained the therapists for doing it, but they trained the patients at the same time how to comply or how to develop an alliance with the therapist to bring about this phenomenon. In essence it took on a cult-like quality."

If Rational Wiki wants to live up to its name then not a single thing should be sourced here from anyone in the ISSTD or associated with the ISSTD period unless it's to call them out for their misdeeds. This article should be in step with the other parts of the trifecta: Satanic Ritual Abuse and Repressed Memories. Both of those articles are comprehensive and call out the junk science and bad actors. The Satanic Panic one as well. Throw in the Chronic Lyme Disease one as well if you want a parallel. This article does not stand with the other related issues here.

And no, I'm not a part of Grey Faction, I have just read their site since it brings up a few choice sources. It's not exactly the be all end all but they try their best. There's a lot of stuff out there that is so fragmented, old, and difficult to search or crossreference that it becomes difficult to write about. Unfortunately no one has written anything extensive on all of this outside of Grey Faction and the purveyors of misinformation, the ISSTD. Perhaps someone with Grey Faction will find this talk page? (Grey Faction is a part of The Satanic Temple, and they have a nice wiki page here already)&mdash; Unsigned, by: 70.112.44.85 / talk

Whether it's real
In the 'Controversies' section, sub-section "Whether it's real", the article suggests that brain imaging scans have determined that the people who claim to have DID are not 'faking it', because they prove that it's 'real'. There is no way for a brain scan to determine whether a person has control of a behavior or not. Anyone who decides to act like they have DID would be expected to have brain-scan anomalies. Scans can point to correlation but not causation. They have predictive and diagnostic value, but they do not prove whether the behavior can be controlled or not.

&mdash; Unsigned, by: 108.180.92.37 / talk 08:34, 13 September 2021‎ (UTC)

Big Rewrite
I've done a major rewrite of the page to address some of the concerns that have been raised over how it presents the scientific debate over the disorder. I've tried to remain as neutral as possible in my presentation while providing official citations for arguments opposed to the diagnosis of this disorder while still leaving as many of the existing citations in favor of the disorder intact. That said: most of the citations I've added, while pointing to proper scientific journals, were discovered through Wikipedia and could definitely benefit from outside review by those more familiar with the topic. I also had to remove a handful of existing citations that pointed to dead pages. KingK (talk) 20:38, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

The Online Multiple Community
One other thing I think needs to be addressed on this page, but that I don't feel I have the authority to tackle, are the references to the online Multiple Community and the citations that point to non-scientific literature posted by them. While I'm supportive of concepts like the neurodiversity model and think that representing the views of those diagnosed with the disorder is important, online Multiple System communities pose a bit of a problem as academic sources from our perspective. The major issue, especially given the rarity of DID as a clinical diagnosis, that there isn't really a way to verify if the members of these communities have been professionally diagnosed with the disorder or self-identify with it without an outside diagnosis. I think these communities should be discussed in the article, but the section needs to be cleaned up. KingK (talk) 20:44, 8 June 2022 (UTC)


 * I'm not going to recommend against this section, as I think it the prevalence of the online multiple community needs to be recognized. There may be a need for some "woo" cautionary labels though - the cited r/plural link contains no small amount of outright woo - references to the souls of fictional character inhabiting multiple system persons, and a variety of fantastical concepts presented as factual experiences of plural-identifying individuals. (Crazy Jane, the DC Comics character created by Grant Morrison and Richard Case in 1989, seems to have provided the single most popular template for some within the online community to describe their experiences with.) Based on what I have been able to find, it seems as if the online plural community is a "very online" community - there are no references I can locate to any clinical or professional opinions on much of what the online community describes. Most of the subculture lore seems to originate from within the online culture itself. Moribund (talk) 01:00, 19 December 2022 (UTC)


 * I'm torn on this stuff. I don't want to dismiss plurality outright, even if I feel a lot of weariness about it, and think we have the obligation to be open and accepting, but some of the things that are said in these places is beyond the pale for me. In particular, I encountered the term "exotrauma", the idea that you can suffer from PTSD from something that happened to you in an alternate reality or past life, and felt deeply upset. I think we ought to tactfully dismiss the woo, but we should be very careful not to dismiss or mock people or systems. But that's easier said than done when some of it is so entangled. I feel like the best we can do is present some of the statements and terminology without commenting on veracity, particularly with some of the vaguer stuff. I don't know. Monochroma (talk) 10:52, 17 April 2023 (UTC)