Dissociative Identity Disorder

Shaili Jain's The Unspeakable Mind (2019) is an impressive examination of the stress experienced by a veteran community that too often is handled with a sense of clinical sterility that borders on inhumanity, or a that of pandering condescension. However, what is striking about Jain's text is the lack of analysis of how trauma manifests in what Heidegger would refer to as average everydayness. This, to me, seems like a missed opportunity, especially as it pertains to trauma-based ethics since all (...) too frequently manifestations of trauma do not occur as they are portrayed to in popular culture, but in the day-to-day and moment-to-moment living of those who deal with trauma. In this article I interrogate everyday manifestations and ideal manifestations of trauma using a comparative lens. My hope is that by focusing my analysis on my process of engagement with traumatic experiences I can help develop new discussions about trauma that will both allow for the discovery of new modes of thinking-about trauma as well as illuminate more nuanced methodologies of healing for those effected by post-traumatic stress in future research. (shrink)

Deutsche Krankheit: eine Diagnosestellung mit Rückblick und Ausblick auf Krankheitsverlauf.

This essay explores the topic of Dissociative Identity Disorder (formerly called “Multiple Personality Disorder”) with special attention to such Quadrophenia masterpieces as “Dr. Jimmy” and “The Real Me.” A number of major philosophical questions arise: Can two or more “persons” really inhabit the same body? How can we hold Dr. Jimmy morally responsible for the reprehensible actions of Mr. Jim? Wouldn’t it be wrong to do so if they are really different people? What is it to be the “same” person (...) over time? Does Dr. Jimmy really have free will? The focus is on the much discussed and important notions of personal identity, free will, and moral responsibility. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that dissociative identity disorder (DID) is best interpreted as a causal model of a (possible) post-traumatic psychological process, as a mechanical model of an abnormal psychological condition. From this perspective we examine and criticize the evidential status of DID, and we demonstrate that there is really no good reason to believe that anyone has ever suffered from DID so understood. This is so because the proponents of DID violate basic methodological principles of good causal modeling. (...) When every ounce of your concentration is fixed upon blasting a winged pig out of the sky, you do not question its species' ontological status. James Morrow, City of Truth (1990). (shrink)

In some recent criminal cases in the United States a defense has been mounted based on an affliction known as Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) (formerly Multiple Personality Disorder). The crux of the defense rests on the proposition that a dominant personality was incapable of appreciating the nature and quality of wrongfulness of conduct caused by an alter personality. This defense has been successful in some cases, but not others, and so philosophers, lawyers, and psychiatrists are now in debate in an (...) attempt to clarify the issues. One of the salient issues involves the question of personal identity between the individual who allegedly committed the offense and the individual who stands accused. Stephen Behnke and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong have recently put forward a test for establishing personal identity in these cases. In this discussion, I present reasons for rejecting their proposal. (shrink)

Finding truth is an art that was learned and unlearned. Truth can only be found by looking for independent confirmation of our beliefs, by reality. This methodology is difficult to apply in personal- and social settings, because power and politics turn 'seeking independent confirmation' into 'avoiding dependent rejection'. A completely different social order is implied and the one keeps running the other into the ground like a tectonic plate. Philosophical Modernism showed us how dualism works, before Post-Modernism challenged it, regressing (...) to monism. (shrink)

A striking feature of post-modernism is its distrust of the subject. If the modern period, beginning with Descartes, sought in the subject a source of certainty, an Archimedian point from which all else could be derived, post- modernism has taken the opposite tack. Rather than taking the self as a foundation, it has seen it as founded, as dependent on the accidents which situate consciousness in the world. The same holds for the unity of the subject. Modernity, in its search (...) for a single foundation, held the subject to be an indissoluble unity. Post-modernism’s position, by contrast, is announced by Nietzsche: “The assumption of one single subject is perhaps unnecessary; perhaps it is just as permissible to assume a multiplicity of subjects, whose interaction and struggle is the basis of our thought and our consciousness in general? ...My hypotheses: The subject as multiplicity.” Given this, there is a natural correspondence between the success of post- modernism and the current interest in multiple personality disorder. In the latter, we actually have the experience of a “multiplicity of subjects” in their interaction and struggle. The subject stands there before us “as multiplicity.” It gives us a concrete case, one which raises some of the pressing questions associated with the post-modern denial of the subject. Confronting it, we ask: how real are the personalities composing the multiplicity of this disordered self? What, in fact, does this multiplicity tell us about the self? about its genesis and status? What does it reveal about “our thought and consciousness in general”? I plan, in the short compass of this paper, to sketch some answers to these questions. §1. A brief description of MPD. The American Psychiatric Association gives two criteria for (MPD) multiple personality disorder. First, and most obviously, there is “the existence within the person of two or more distinct personalities or personality states (each with its own relatively enduring pattern. (shrink)