A (pseudo)Freudian take on MPD

• MPD and Freudian theory by Leigh , 2/26/98
  
  

This is my first message on this forum so please bear with me if I violate any discursive conventions or seem at all rude. I am a third year PHD student in Counseling Psych. at the University of Texas and a bit of a neophyte in this pool swimming with more obvious wisdom and clinical experience. My beginner's take on MPD or DID or whatever, reading through Freud and some more contemporary analytic as well as cognitive theories, is that it seems plausible that person's whom, having survived, more or less, extreme violation and trauma in childhood, certainly may utilize the dissociative processes that are available to most of us, as humans, in this culture, to make sense of their worlds in ways that allow continued survival, and on the hope of acquiring some love, attention, affirmation, protection, whatever the things are that we all seek. Freud's notion of Hysteria, based as it is on some anachronistic (to us)and oppressive notions of the "feminine psyche," does perhaps retain some usefulness for conceptualizing the human, although "constructed" in western culture(s)as feminine, experience of emotionality and affect. Intuitively, we think of dissociation as utilized in response to the threat of death, violation, harm, or in dealing with an unacceptable reality, but might also dissociation be dynamicized in terms of an affective process, as in managing the emotions that arise from the threats I’ve alluded to? Given the entrance into contemporary psychological theories of the various notions of "multiple selves" as a normative or typical conceptualization of being, identity, or "the self," ALA Jerome Bruner, Kenneth Gergen, Joseph Dunne, the philosophical psychologies of Mikail Bakhtin and Charles Taylor ( and my mentor, Frank Richardson), why even that vasty empiricist John Kihlstrom muses on the possibility of multiple "self-nodes" in an associative memory network, might not MPD or DID be conceptualized as a pathogenic adaptation by disassociation of the self awareness of many different selves in one discrete physical body? Or, expressed a little differently, defensive dissociation of a sense of continuity of embodied personal experience. It seems to me that one who began their "story" in the lifeworld in such an interpersonal milieu as is described by persons with MPD/DID would have a rather large stake in not living in continuous awareness of such life threatening, self violating experience. The notion of Hysteria may be re-introduced here to explain a possible trigger mechanism for dissociation. In the classical descriptions of Hysteria made by Freud and Breuer, it is characterized by intense emotionality and lability, "seductiveness," and attempts to "manipulate" or acquire by less than direct means, the love and attention of others (doctors in particular!). The hyper-emotionality described by Freud and Breuer (and Charcot) was seen as leading to "fainting" and "sinking" spells and fits of seemingly uncontrolled emotional display. Might it be possible that amp-ing up of emotional level, whether in response to some perception, or to some memory, is a trigger, or a part of the dynamic of dissociation? These characterizations of "hysterics" by Freud might be re-interpreted, from a hermeneutic of therapeutic intent, to describe, at least in part, some of the more salient features or characteristics described by contemporary clinicians whom work extensively with persons identified as "having" MPD. Rather than paternalistically, and quite judgmentally, problematize the previously mentioned characteristics, from what I know of Control-Mastery Theory, I would say that the intense emotionality, and "seductiveness," of these persons were expressions of pathogenic beliefs, or adaptations (ala Rappaport)and that the manipulations were "testing," or trying to meet their need for love and growth as human beings in ways that may have been adaptive in a traumatic early world, and checking on a therapist to see if they will recapitulate the responses of the traumatizers, or if they will give their approval, or "permission" for the person to behave in a different way, more in line with growth and "normal" development. I spent a year (1989) working as an attendant on a ward of a private hospital that specialized in MPD. Although I did not have as much education or clinical experience as I do now (at least I hope that's the case!) it was my impression that at least part of the experience of MPD was being "constructed" right before my eyes. By this I mean that life on the unit was an educational milieu for how to have MPD. New patients were taken aside by the more experienced ones (some of whom had been hospitalized for more than 3 years! the days of really good insurance!)and instructed in how to control the staff and doctors, how dissociation "really looks," what should cause switching, the acceptable number of "alters" to have (no one was allowed to have as many as the "famous" person with MPD whom had been written up in the New York Times) what kind of alters that a true MPD should have, etc. If this sounds cynical, it may be that it is a bit, but I actually overheard these things being talked about. It was de riguer(spelling?) for the new patients to read "Sybil," or "When Rabbit Howls," which was observable as all new patients slept on mattresses in the dayroom and I saw one after another reading the same dog-earred copies of these books. What all this amounts to is that I don't deny the phenomenon of MPD/DID, I believe it is, to some extent, a constructed phenomenon. I accept that hideous things have been done to these persons, that perhaps intense emotion triggered by memory or a perception may somehow instantiate a discontinuation of self-awareness, and that we all may be conceptualized as being different selves in different situations, times and relationships. It is some of the cultural constructs of MPD/DID that I choose to re-interpret from my own perspective(s). Anyway, that's a somewhat simplistic rendering of some of the thinking that I have done in attempting to integrate some of these ideas. I hope that I have been helpful, or at least done no harm! Please feel free to e-mail me to discuss this thread or any other that might be interesting. My address is: aadh@mail.utexas.edu Thanks and goodbye!

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