Alter Identities Quotes

“Dissociative identity disorder is conceptualized as a childhood onset, posttraumatic developmental disorder in which the child is unable to consolidate a unified sense of self. Detachment from emotional and physical pain during trauma can result in alterations in memory encoding and storage. In turn, this leads to fragmentation and compartmentalization of memory and impairments in retrieving memory.2,4,19 Exposure to early, usually repeated trauma results in the creation of discrete behavioral states that can persist and, over later development, become elaborated, ultimately developing into the alternate identities of dissociative identity disorder.”
― Bethany L. Brand

“As an adult, it shatters me that the child parts of my mind froze at those ages, didn't develop, and continued to believe the outrageous deceptions the abusers used on me.”
― Wendy Hoffman, White Witch in a Black Robe: A True Story About Criminal Mind Control

“Dear little ones, I know this might be scary and confusing right now, but my name is Jade and I'm here to help.”
― Jade Miller, Dear Little Ones

“It is unlikely that one ANP will serve as a constant throughout the person's life. Your client is, therefore, likely to have others besides the ones you know, or several who you might think of as "the host". Adults with dissociative disorders often have several ANPs from earlier stages of life inside. They usually have the same name but are of different ages. Sometimes, there are several current ANPs, each of whom assumes she or he is the "real" person and is amnesiac for the existence of the others. Their current knowledge and experience may overlap, while their other characteristics differ somewhat. This makes them glide easily from one to the other, and the therapist can easily miss the switch. p22”
― Alison Miller, Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control

“Finally, those who do not meet the SCID-D-R standard for "distinct identities or personality states," but who do meet the SCID-D-R's other four standards (for DSM-IV's Criterion A and Criterion B) for DID, receive a SCID-D-R diagnosis of DDNOS-1a.”
― Paul F. Dell, Dissociation and the Dissociative Disorders: DSM-V and Beyond

“When treating their first few DID cases, therapists typically focus too much attention on the alters. This focus tends to distract from what is fundamental–the patients’ pervasive dissociative/posttraumatic distress and maladaptation. Has something similar occurred in psychiatry’s view of DID? Have the compelling phenomena of alters distracted us from the matrix of dissociative and posttraumatic symptoms in which alters are embedded?
- Dell, P. F. (2001). Why the Diagnostic Criteria for Dissociative Identity Disorder Should Be Changed, Journal of Trauma and Dissociation, 2 (1).”
― Paul F. Dell

“To preemptively protect the child so that the child may anticipate the abuse rather than be surprised by it, protector parts become persecutors modeled on the abusers. Thus, parts who were protectors when the person was a young child may become persecutors in time, holding anger and rage and meting out punishments to other parts of the self.”
― Elizabeth F. Howell, Understanding and Treating Dissociative Identity Disorder

“The SCID-D-R's standard for "distinct identities or personality states"
(DSM-IV, p. 487) is: "Persistent manifestations of the presence of different personalities, as indicated by at least four of the following:
a) ongoing dialogues between different people;
b) acting or feeling that the different people inside of him/her take control of his/her behavior or speech;
c) characteristic visual image that is associated with the other person, distinct from the subject;
d) characteristic age associated with the different people inside of him/her;
e) feeling that the different people inside of him/her have different memories, behaviors, and feelings;
f) feeling that the different people inside of him/her are separate from his/her personality and have lives of their own" (Steinberg, 1994, p. 106).
[The author believes that it is of considerable importance that none of the SCID-D-R's six criteria for "distinct personalities or personality states" are observable signs; each of the six is a subjective symptom or experience that must be reported to the test administrator. This striking fact supports the contention that assessment of dissociation should be based on subjective symptoms rather than signs (Dell, 2006b. 2009b).]”
― Paul F. Dell, Dissociation and the Dissociative Disorders: DSM-V and Beyond

“Two entirely distinct state of consciousness were present which alternated very frequently and without warning and which became more and more differentiated in the course of the illness. In one of these states she recognized her normal surroundings; she was melancholy and anxious, but relatively normal. In the other state she hallucinated and was "naughty" —that is to say, she was abusive, used to throw the cushions at people, so far as the contractures at various times allowed, tore buttons off her bedclothes and linen with those of her fingers which she could move, and so on. At this stage of her illness if something had been moved in the room or someone had entered or left it (during her other state of consciousness) she would complain of having "lost" some time and would remark upon the gap in her train of conscious thoughts.”
― Sigmund Freud, Studies in Hysteria

“It is clear that the various personalities I am seeing are quite different from one another.

The physical changes are startling. I have come to know Missy, Jo, Renee, and Joan Frances well and am no longer surprised by the move from one personality to another. In fact, I experience each of them as different from the others in the same way as my other patients are different from one another. Although they share the same body, they are not the same and do not wear the body in the same way. It may be more accurate to say that the various personalities share the same physical space in a serial manner.

Their descriptions of their parents have virtually nothing in common. Renee even denies that they are her parents. She doesn't claim different parents. She doesn't claim any at all, saying that she is "a creation of this entity alone.”
― Lynn I. Wilson, The Flock: The Autobiography of a Multiple Personality

“KIuft (1985a, b) describes eight year old Tom, who could "space out," but remain aware of partially dissociated alter personalities. One, Marvin, was based on the character Captain Kirk of the TV series "Star Trek," and on the TV series character "Hulk." Marvin also represented Tom's father. Another alter personality was derived from Mr. Spock, who was also identified with his mother. Two female alter personalities had names taken from 'The Flintstones." The use of fantasy is clearly apparent despite the fantasized characters being identifications with real characters in the child's life. Tom gives us a glimpse of the transition of his fantasies becoming dissociated mental structures.”
― Walter C. Young

“The identities may develop in number, complexity, and sense of separateness as the child proceeds through latency, adolescence, and adulthood (R. P. Kluft, 1984; Putnam, 1997).
—Guidelines for Treating Dissociative Identity Disorder in Adults, Third Revision”
― James A. Chu

“Whatever the theory, it is important to note that clinicians such as Kluft draw attention to the clinical error of insisting that all alters talk as one or that only the alter with the legal name should be validated. 'Such stances are commonly associated with therapeutic failure'.”
― Valerie Sinason, Attachment, Trauma and Multiplicity: Working with Dissociative Identity Disorder

“While professionals and patients can be blamed for 'believing' in an illness or having one, patients also report problems when they are believed. Some professionals, they commented, have worryingly simplistic ideas of 'integration'.
Ignoring the separately named alters in effect offers a psychic death sentence rather than aiding integration. If anything it can create a compliant false-self 'main person' who answers to [his or] her name and keeps all other 'states' in silent terror internally.”
― Valerie Sinason, Attachment, Trauma and Multiplicity: Working with Dissociative Identity Disorder

“Peg's very young alters formed around her father's abuse. But when she was 8 another alter group formed, as Peg reported, from ritualized sexual torture by a neighbor who forced Peg to ritually injure two other children. By age 13 Peg had fallen victim to her older brother's sexual violence as well and this led to more splitting. In her teens and twenties Peg added more alters in response even to nontraumatic life disappointments, since the splitting mechanism worked so well to insulate her from suffering.”
― Roger Lewin, Broken Images Broken Selves: Dissociative Narratives In Clinical Practice

“There are distinct mood changes with borderline individuals that may be experienced as very alien or disconnected to the client. The loss of memory associated with DID, however, does not occur in BPD, and the mood changes do not constitute a change in personality to the extent that a part of the psyche takes control of the body outside the individual's consciousness.”
― Deborah Bray Haddock

“Children in our culture are familiar with transformation of identity from comics, movies, television, and books. Who has not watched a child zooming around on the sidewalk or in the backyard, pretending to be a superhero or some other figure? Who can doubt the child's intensity of imaginative involvement in this transformation? I think it is reasonable to say that the normal child partly believes in this transformation on a transient basis.
It is not necessary to wonder where the MPD child gets the idea of creating someone else inside to cope with the abuse. The strategy of transformation of identity to gain strength, coping power, even and vulnerability is readily available in the child's environment.”
― Colin A. Ross, Dissociative Identity Disorder: Diagnosis, Clinical Features, and Treatment of Multiple Personality

“In principle, the number of parts of the personality in a given individual has little bearing on whether dissociation is at the secondary or tertiary level. A patient with secondary structural dissociation may have many EPs, while a patient with tertiary structural dissociation may only have two ANPs and two EPs. However, in general, more divisions relate to less mental efficiency and more likelihood that a traumatized individual will have tertiary structural dissociation.”
― Ellert R.S. Nijenhuis, The Haunted Self: Structural Dissociation and the Treatment of Chronic Traumatization

“healing is not about eliminating parts of the self, but about embracing every aspect of who they are with compassion and courage”
― Savannah Gloria Buxton, Beyond the Fragments: A Healing Path for Dissociative Identity Disorder