Does this person have DID?Dissociative idetity disorder?

Personally I see that more as a legal creation than a psychological condition. For the justice system whether the person is in control is key for culpability and the whole idea of dissociation has become massively overused for that reason with psychology serving the needs of the courts and 'legal' insanity--which is very different form psychiatric illness..

From what I know of DID (from having encountered someone who supposedly suffered from it), the different personalities aren't generally aware of each other's existence, but the person will suffer 'blackouts' where the other personality takes over. I think it's supposed to be more like a trauma has happened, and the memories of that trauma have been repressed and shut away, but instead of just laying dormant they develop on their own and keep ticking over. So what you might find is that the alternate persona is the child that was abused / forced to become an assassin / what have you. Back when I knew the person who claimed to have this disorder though, I found out from a nurse I spoke to that a lot of experts don't even believe DID exists.

I'm not an expert and I hope someone can answer with more clarity and authority, but I think where the two personalities interact, is that not more like schizophrenia? That was the conclusion that was drawn about the person I knew, because instead of having blackouts she claimed that the other personality was present all the time with her and even spoke to her at times. She could always remember having interacted with it and had knowledge of it's background and 'history'.

BlueLucario said:

No, this personality is triggered. Is that still schizoprenia? I mean she turs into sumthin else out of duress.

Click to expand...

When she goes back to her 'calm' state, does she remember what she's done whilst under stress, or does she start to get stressed, then suddenly she's somewhere else with no knowledge of how she got from one place to the other?

Multiple personality is not universally, or I would argue even widely, accepted as a real condition. It is most often claimed to exist by people charged with a crime they clearly commited but claim to not be responsible for. Reputable case studies would probably be in single digits--making this, if real, and extraordinarily rare condition.

Schizophrenia is very different indeed. It relates to a break from reality not within the identity. A schizophrenic person may hear voices but they are of 'other people' not from within his or her own identity.

Blue - this is where I go when I need to "diagnose" one of my characters.

http://www.behavenet.com/capsules/disorders/dsm4TRclassification.htm

veinglory said:

Multiple personality is not universally, or I would argue even widely, accepted as a real condition. It is most often claimed to exist by people charged with a crime they clearly commited but claim to not be responsible for. Reputable case studies would probably be in single digits--making this, if real, and extraordinarily rare condition.

Schizophrenia is very different indeed. It relates to a break from reality not within the identity. A schizophrenic person may hear voices but they are of 'other people' not from within his or her own identity.

Click to expand...

Yes, that was pretty much what I was told a while back. The thing with the person I knew was that even if you accepted that DID was a genuine condition, her symptoms didn't match up and were more along the lines of schizophrenia. Her 'alternate' was a completely different person, different gender, age, nationality even.

With Blue's example, I'm not sure what the exact diagnosis would be but it doesn't strike me as DID (again, even assuming you accept that it exists at all). If it's just that she gets murderous when under stress, that doesn't sound the same thing, more a problem of self control / anger management.

'Sybil' and the '3 Faces of Eve' showcase real instances of multiple personalities that grew from various traumas the women suffered as children. Some personalites are known to the primary, some are hidden coming out very rarely. Different ones cope with different situations. Each entity has her own mannerisms, strengths, weaknesses, handwriting, etc, sometimes there's even a difference in vision, hearing or taste among them. Integrating personalities is extremely difficult.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_(book)

And this was the basis for the '3 Faces of Eve'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Costner-Sizemore

Eve is a famous case but can also be seen like tales from alien abductees etc. A detailed account does not make the experience undeniably real.

I would suggest looking into altered and dissociative states in general as it seem to me that she doesn't necessarily become another personna, but just detach from awareness/control of her body. But in general be aware that a lot of these dissociative disorders have very limited scientific credibility.

You can, of course, just have her be how she is. Unless she goes to someone who diagnoses her it may not matter what that diagnosis would be?

veinglory said:

Eve is a famous case but can also be seen like tales from alien abductees etc. A detailed account does not make the experience undeniably real.

I would suggest looking into altered and dissociative states in general as it seem to me that she doesn't necessarily become another personna, but just detach from awareness/control of her body. But in general be aware that a lot of these dissociative disorders have very limited scientific credibility.

You can, of course, just have her be how she is. Unless she goes to someone who diagnises her it may not matter what that diagnosis would be?

Click to expand...

Veinglory makes a very good point - unless you have someone in the book actually saying 'she is DID or schizophrenic or what have you' then if you just write her behaving as she does, do you need to have a label to explain why she does what she does?

Just looking at some of the literature, there seems to be great debate even between experts as to what is a symptom of one condition / disorder and what belongs to another, so I think if you just establish what her behaviour is, and make it believable for your readers, then that should suffice for the story.

Just as an example, I have a character in one of my books who has Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, only where he comes from no one has thought up that term yet or even identified it as a condition. At no point do I have someone sit down with him and say 'hey, you might have PTSD, you know', nor do I say it anywhere in my narrative, but I gave him symptoms that people might recognise and let them draw their own conclusions about him.

People are so different, what I would do would be to go through the research stuff you have on DID, see what aspects fit your character in terms of how you want her to behave, and then just write her.

I think that this is the best article ever written for the lay person on Dissociative Identity Disorder.

To boil it down: Someone who is diagnosed as having Dissociative Identity Disorder clearly has some kind of serious psychological problem and/or distress. However, the ways in which they manifest their issues are shaped by the expectations of the people they see for treatment, and on the information they get from the world around them.

Many psychologists, psychiatrists, and neurologists don't believe that the symptoms Dissociative Identity Disorder patients report are objectively "real" (in the sense that interrupted sleep is a "real" symptom of depression, given that it's reported cross-culturally in both treated and untreated patients, or in the sense that auditory hallucinations are a "real" symptom of schizophrenia, given that they're reported cross-culturally in both treated and untreated patients). Rather, these professionals believe that the Dissociative Identity Disorder symptoms are a culture-bound way for patients to portray their psychological distress, just as "hysterical paralysis" was a culture-bound way for patients to portray psychological distress in the 19th century.

I agree with the don't-make-a-diagnosis-thing. As soon as I read a diagnosis in a book I go into hypervigilance mode, looking at symptoms, weighing every word, etc. DID is extremely difficult to portray well and would be offputting to many.

Unless a diagnosis is central to the story--then you'd better have your ducks in a row to hold up under some scrutiny. This would take more than a little research.

BlueLucario said:

It maybe central to the story. I'm not sure. But I look at it just for fun anyway.

I can't interpret this stuff by myself.

What do you mean, don't diagnose?

Click to expand...

Blue, if you have a look at my post and veinglory's. What we mean is you give your character symptoms of a condition but you don't expressly state in your book that she has that condition. You leave it up to the readers to wonder if she has DID or not.

BlueLucario said:

I guess. Is it that show don't tell concept?

Click to expand...

It's along similar lines. What people are saying is that unless her actually being diagnosed with DID is a part of the story, then does it really need to be mentioned explicitly? Or, is the way she behaves important to the story, whether she's got DID or schizophrenia or just got up on the wrong side of the bed that morning?

For one example, you would have a story where someone is diagnosed DID, wrongly or rightly, and has to cope with the issues that brings. Or something like the film 'Identity' where part of the story revolves around a certain aspect of the condition. Or you could make an issue out of her 'becoming' an other personality, in that it makes her more dangerous than an average assassin, and so the police or whoever's after her might discuss DID in order to explain how she behaves. Or the girl herself might be concerned by it.

Maybe have a read of 'The Strange Case of Dr Jeckyll and Mr Hyde' by Robert Louis Stephenson. (There are several film versions and a (rather gory) TV series that aired recently on the BBC). Although in that case the changes in personality were caused by a potion rather than something psychiatric but the way Jeckyll reacts to his becoming Hyde might give you some inspiration.

Or if you just want the story to be about the girl and her experiences, you can just write about her. You don't need to have anyone say 'she has DID' for the story to work if that's what you're doing. Just write her as she is and your readers might pick up on it if they want, or they might just accept her as being like that.

It depends on how you want to focus the story. If you do decide to state somewhere in the story that she has DID though, you will have to make sure your research is accurate, as you might get readers with knowledge of the disorder.

Blue, there's a site called For those who want to know. I saw info in there about brainwashing. There's also info about the real story of The Machurian Candidate. Very interesting stuff.

BlueLucario said:

Good point. By the way, I was also researching brainwashed kids. Those kind of kids in countries. Who were trained to kill and become meat shields for the military. Lily is the same thing. She was trained to kill since she was four. But let's say when she's around eight she gets separated from the evil man who raised her. How do you think she will turn out, in terms of social skills? Or behavior?

Just a curious question.

Click to expand...

How do you think she will turn out,? Any way you want. Some people will lead normal lives, some will commit suicide, some wind up in institutions and everything in between. My personal experience is those who aren't dangerously crazy, alcoholics or medicated are at least rather cynical to slightly paranoid. However, I know some turn out normal in that they lead productive tax-paying jobs, have kids and never wind up in prison. Their spouses might relate an occassional crying fit or panic attack. You could have 3 psychiatrists argue over the diagnosis.

Psychiatrist 1, "I think this is DID."

Psychiatrist 2, "No it's Multiple Personality."

Psychiatrist 3, "You're both wrong, she's JPN. (Just Plain Nuts)"

Run it past us. I'm guessing there are those of us who keep a DSM IV around for fun and would be happy to say whether your idea would give us heartburn or not.

You can go a number of ways with this, imo. You can take a peek at the DSM and find a diagnosis that fits closely enough to design your character's issues around it. Or you can find something that fits closely enough. Or even more than one diagnosis. Assuming that your story needs her to have a diagnosis, to begin with.

In my own experience with psych folks, they don't always have a clue what someone's diagnosis is, either. I've seen them go from one end to the other with myriad diagnoses. Psych docs can have the same problem as medical docs, in that they want to label a person with what they perceive as his/her problem so they can treat that label. If there are symptoms that fall outside that label, they are quite possibly ignored.

I'd also agree, at first glance, with the one who said that your character's issue sounds more like anger management problems, rather than DID. Then again, if you want her to be DID, you can follow the DSM's description.

One more thing--if you want her to have a dissociative "flavor," so to speak, and you need a diagnosis with that in it, you can always have one of the docs use DD-NOS. That stands for "Dissociative Disorder--not otherwise specified."

Yeah--I know it's Wiki, but here's their list of DSM codes. They also have an entry on DID. If you want info on DD-NOS, that's a little bit tougher. This place might give you a start, though, if you are interested.

Shwebb said:

Psych docs can have the same problem as medical docs, in that they want to label a person with what they perceive as his/her problem so they can treat that label. If there are symptoms that fall outside that label, they are quite possibly ignored.
.

Click to expand...

Unfortunately, that is a realistic scenario. There's an old saying, "Treat the patient, not the laboratory."