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How Dissociative Identity Disorder Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to you stuff you should know from house Stuff
0:04
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
0:12
Speaker 1: Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Choke Bryant, and there's no
0:16
Speaker 1: there's no one of my alters. No, he's his own dude. Okay,
0:22
Speaker 1: do you have alters? Okay? Do you know? Not that
0:27
Speaker 1: I know. I think we've each seen a bit of
0:29
Speaker 1: an altar in each other. But that's just called that's
0:33
Speaker 1: being jerks every now and in bad mood. Yeah, that's
0:35
Speaker 1: a little different. I was on a forum about a
0:40
Speaker 1: forum for people with the associative identity disorder and like
0:45
Speaker 1: the from what I was reading, you sometimes you feel crowded. Um.
0:50
Speaker 1: Some people have like felt like they have had altars
0:53
Speaker 1: like their whole life, as long as they've been around interesting. Um,
0:57
Speaker 1: sometimes they don't. Like One of the entries I saw
0:59
Speaker 1: was like, does your altar have to have a name?
1:03
Speaker 1: And it was like, I don't necessarily think of them
1:05
Speaker 1: as people, and another person responded and so that that's
1:09
Speaker 1: often like an early stage of the process, and then
1:11
Speaker 1: over time is they become more pronounced, they end up
1:14
Speaker 1: adopting names, or it is uh, super moody or some
1:21
Speaker 1: other bad behavior that you say is disassociative identity disorder,
1:27
Speaker 1: and you give it a name, Well, you don't, your
1:30
Speaker 1: therapist does, yeah, or you might. Yeah. So it's controversial
1:34
Speaker 1: and we'll get to that. But um, I guess we
1:38
Speaker 1: should start off by saying that another name for this
1:40
Speaker 1: a more popular name, even though it's been uh since
1:44
Speaker 1: n D I D. The original name was multiple personality
1:49
Speaker 1: disorder personality. Yeah. When I was reading this at first,
1:53
Speaker 1: I was like, this sounds an awful lot like split personality.
1:56
Speaker 1: It is. It is. They just renamed it and we'll
1:59
Speaker 1: see pretty soon, which is kind of a good move
2:01
Speaker 1: because from what I can tell, it seems to be
2:07
Speaker 1: a real thing that underwent a period of intense exploitation
2:13
Speaker 1: and abuse, so much so that now there's a lot
2:17
Speaker 1: of people who doubt that it's a real thing, but
2:20
Speaker 1: that there are still people out there who do suffer
2:23
Speaker 1: from it enough so that psychiatry has said, we need
2:27
Speaker 1: to change the name and then just focus on these
2:30
Speaker 1: people that really have this. Now. Did they change it
2:32
Speaker 1: because it had a stigma? Really? That was the only reason. Yeah. Yeah,
2:36
Speaker 1: there's this excellent article um on I O nine actually
2:41
Speaker 1: about UM. I think it's called like the myth of
2:44
Speaker 1: dissociative identity disorder and um, the myth of multiple personality disorder.
2:50
Speaker 1: Thank you they went old school, yeah, um, and the
2:52
Speaker 1: lady who wrote it did a really good job of
2:54
Speaker 1: explaining the controversy around it and also like the renewal
2:58
Speaker 1: of it as well, like how it became renewed. But yeah,
3:01
Speaker 1: it was because it was basically, um exploited and fictionalized
3:08
Speaker 1: by the psychiatric community a few notable people that we'll
3:13
Speaker 1: get to all that though. Yeah, so, I mean everybody
3:15
Speaker 1: has heard of multiple personality disorder thanks to that that
3:18
Speaker 1: period of exploitation from the fifties to the eighties. Um,
3:22
Speaker 1: so you have probably a pretty good idea of the
3:25
Speaker 1: concept behind it of the disorder. To begin with, it's
3:29
Speaker 1: m a single person has their normal, their original um,
3:35
Speaker 1: what's called their host personality, and sometimes, especially under periods
3:43
Speaker 1: of acute psychosocial stress, maybe confronted with stress or something
3:49
Speaker 1: they don't want to think about or talk about or whatever,
3:52
Speaker 1: another one of their personalities will emerge, and they're generally
3:56
Speaker 1: tied to a trauma and early life that you may
4:01
Speaker 1: not even know about until you have therapy that out
4:06
Speaker 1: of your subconscious right. And Um, they believe that for
4:10
Speaker 1: dissociative identity disorder, when it does come about from the
4:14
Speaker 1: result of a trauma, it comes about as a coping
4:18
Speaker 1: mechanism to protect the mind because the the host personality
4:23
Speaker 1: simply can't handle dealing with it. But there is some
4:28
Speaker 1: aspect of that person which is characterized through another personality
4:33
Speaker 1: that can handle it. And so that personality will come
4:37
Speaker 1: out to handle those periods where um, the the person
4:43
Speaker 1: is confronted with those memories. Yeah. And it can express
4:47
Speaker 1: itself in different ways depending on, UM, how severe a
4:50
Speaker 1: disorder is. But generally, if you've ever seen the United
4:53
Speaker 1: States of terra, um you ever seen that? No, I
4:57
Speaker 1: know of it, but I've never seen an episode. Emily
4:59
Speaker 1: was into it. Um, we're talking about completely new people.
5:03
Speaker 1: But your behavior, your speech, you can be a different sex,
5:07
Speaker 1: you can have a different accent, um, different species. Yeah,
5:11
Speaker 1: you could be like a dog technically, UM. I think
5:15
Speaker 1: that's a little more rare. I would imagine. Yeah. Um,
5:18
Speaker 1: And there is no timetable that's um, it doesn't necessarily
5:22
Speaker 1: happen like right after a trauma, can come out years later. Um.
5:26
Speaker 1: And it just there's not an awareness necessarily. Uh, that's
5:31
Speaker 1: a big one. Well, there's not an awareness of the
5:34
Speaker 1: host person doesn't have an awareness of the altars coming out.
5:38
Speaker 1: Sometimes they do sometimes, but the altars usually are aware
5:41
Speaker 1: of the other altars and the host. And that was
5:45
Speaker 1: like it was in the United States of Tara. Yeah,
5:47
Speaker 1: sometimes the um the altars, which I don't know if
5:51
Speaker 1: we specifically said or not yet, but an altar is
5:53
Speaker 1: one of these non one of the other personalities within
5:57
Speaker 1: the host personality. Yeah, and there's there's usually at LEAs
6:00
Speaker 1: to others. There has to be to a host at
6:04
Speaker 1: least one other right, UM. But then it can go
6:08
Speaker 1: People have reported up to a hundred or beyond UM
6:12
Speaker 1: and they can happen at the same time too. Yeah.
6:14
Speaker 1: That's another thing is they can switch between them um
6:18
Speaker 1: pretty quickly. And these periods where the altars emerge can
6:23
Speaker 1: take place over the course of days or weeks. Basically,
6:27
Speaker 1: if you if you if there's a period where the
6:30
Speaker 1: altars are really kind of coming out and fluidly changing,
6:33
Speaker 1: that's a period of severe stress that that person is undergoing. Yeah,
6:37
Speaker 1: maybe calling back that previous drama. Maybe not. It might
6:40
Speaker 1: just be triggered by stress period and you said also
6:43
Speaker 1: that some sometimes a lot of times the altars are
6:46
Speaker 1: aware of each other. There's also been plenty of documented
6:49
Speaker 1: cases where the altars don't like each other. Sometimes they
6:52
Speaker 1: don't like the host um or they don't have much
6:55
Speaker 1: respect for the host uh, or like one of the
7:00
Speaker 1: other altars, they don't like how they deal with the
7:02
Speaker 1: host or deal with life or something like that, which
7:05
Speaker 1: is kind of neat because that that shows that these
7:09
Speaker 1: altars are aware that that the effects or the actions
7:15
Speaker 1: of the other altar or the host affects them. Yeah,
7:19
Speaker 1: like they are somehow they understand that they're part of
7:23
Speaker 1: the whole. Well, you can be uh, the host person
7:27
Speaker 1: that just the regular Josh is a non drinker and
7:30
Speaker 1: you could have an alcoholic altar. Yeah, thinks the host
7:35
Speaker 1: is a square And like, I can't wait to get
7:37
Speaker 1: my hands on a drink because Josh is like he's
7:39
Speaker 1: he won't go near the stuff. But now that I'm randy,
7:43
Speaker 1: I'm gonna buy that twelve pack of maister Brow. Yeah,
7:46
Speaker 1: and very I don't think I've ever had a sip
7:49
Speaker 1: of maister Brow. I had a very long night with
7:52
Speaker 1: it about fifteen years ago. Okay, so you might have
7:56
Speaker 1: undergone something that's similar to UM, the asociative disorder. We
8:00
Speaker 1: should say also when they renamed associative disorder, they also
8:06
Speaker 1: took all of these components that used to make up
8:09
Speaker 1: multiple personality disorder and split them. So now there's four
8:14
Speaker 1: associated disorders. UM. There is dissociative identity disorder, which is
8:20
Speaker 1: the most extreme, that's the one with altars and different
8:22
Speaker 1: personalities coming out. And then there is UM dissociative amnesia,
8:30
Speaker 1: which is remember in our Amnicia podcasts who have brought
8:33
Speaker 1: this one about UM, where you just kind of forget
8:38
Speaker 1: a certain experience. Yeah, like I had this terrible car crash.
8:41
Speaker 1: I don't even remember it all right, And it was
8:43
Speaker 1: dissociative amnesia. That that's that where it's like you don't
8:47
Speaker 1: remember the terrible thing that happened to you. Um. There's
8:52
Speaker 1: also dissociative fugue, which is where you basically just leave
8:57
Speaker 1: your life. You walk away from your life and maybe
8:59
Speaker 1: you seem like you're kind of out of it or whatever,
9:02
Speaker 1: maybe you're under the influence of a different personality. UM.
9:06
Speaker 1: It's it's not just like I'm not gonna come home
9:09
Speaker 1: any longer. It's like you left your life and are
9:12
Speaker 1: a different person. You're leading in different life in the
9:15
Speaker 1: last days, weeks, months, um, and then chuck. The fourth
9:19
Speaker 1: one is the personalization disorder, which is like you're you're
9:23
Speaker 1: watching your life as if you're viewing a movie. You're detached.
9:27
Speaker 1: And I think that one. I think these can work
9:30
Speaker 1: together because I know that if you have d I D,
9:33
Speaker 1: you definitely have moments of experiencing uh that one. Yeah,
9:37
Speaker 1: they they like, even if you're just the host, you
9:39
Speaker 1: might feel like you're just watching yourself instead of being yourself.
9:43
Speaker 1: So the dissociative identity disorder diagnosis is almost has like
9:47
Speaker 1: split personalities fluid is switches between the different disorders, and
9:51
Speaker 1: the one thing that they all have in common is
9:53
Speaker 1: that they all appear to be coping mechanisms to protect
9:56
Speaker 1: the mind from a trauma. They're basically saying like I'm
9:59
Speaker 1: check king out of my life or I'm detaching myself
10:03
Speaker 1: from my life, or I'm just not going to remember
10:06
Speaker 1: that part of my life right, or I am I
10:10
Speaker 1: can't handle my life and this other personality can. Yeah,
10:14
Speaker 1: And it's not it's not always just those things that
10:16
Speaker 1: you know. Some of the side symptoms are can be hallucinations.
10:21
Speaker 1: A lot of times it leads to substance abuse or
10:24
Speaker 1: eating disorders, UM depressioning, anxiety, and mood swings obviously obvi.
10:30
Speaker 1: And uh, memory disturbance is either short or long term, right,
10:35
Speaker 1: it's kind of one of the keys. Probably UM and
10:40
Speaker 1: you apparently a person suffering from dissociative identity sort of
10:43
Speaker 1: just kind of like you said, foggy is a really
10:46
Speaker 1: good descriptor of if not life, then their periods of UM,
10:52
Speaker 1: this condition flaring up, I guess. Yeah, just their sense
10:55
Speaker 1: of place and time is just completely disrupted. It sounds awful. Yeah,
10:59
Speaker 1: it is awful. Yeah, it is UM. Like I said,
11:01
Speaker 1: I haven't seen the United States of Terror, but apparently
11:04
Speaker 1: it's a lot of comic effect out of Yeah, of course,
11:06
Speaker 1: but if you have dissociative identity disorder, you'd likely have
11:10
Speaker 1: a really hard struggle in life. Yeah, and it shows
11:14
Speaker 1: some of that too. I mean, it's obviously for TV,
11:16
Speaker 1: so there is some comedy with some of the altars,
11:18
Speaker 1: but it also shows the toll that it takes on
11:20
Speaker 1: the family and stuff like that. So, uh, this has
11:24
Speaker 1: been around for a little while. We've understood it its
11:27
Speaker 1: symptoms since at least the late eighteenth century. Yeah, and
11:32
Speaker 1: and some early scientists and researchers did a pretty good
11:36
Speaker 1: job considering how long ago it was nailing it. Um. Well,
11:39
Speaker 1: it's a pretty like extravagant yeah case. Yeah. People sure, doctors,
11:45
Speaker 1: especially in the eighteen hundreds and seventeen hundreds, were like
11:49
Speaker 1: pretty excited about it, you know. Um, so demonic possession
11:53
Speaker 1: and weird things like that. Back in the day. A
11:56
Speaker 1: lot of many of those cases may have been things
11:59
Speaker 1: like these disorders. Uh, we just didn't know about it
12:03
Speaker 1: back then, so we just said someone was a hysteric
12:05
Speaker 1: or a witch and they killed them, yeah, or lock
12:09
Speaker 1: them up, you know, in some room. Yeah. Um, but
12:11
Speaker 1: the first symptoms of the i D came around in
12:14
Speaker 1: nineteen and sev it's a long time ago. Yeah, a
12:18
Speaker 1: guy named eber Heart Gamelon No, yeah, Gamelon, Yeah, I
12:23
Speaker 1: think it's g M E L I N. I would
12:27
Speaker 1: go silent GM that melon. Why don't they just spell
12:31
Speaker 1: it right, that's just a guess. Yeah. Well, he was
12:34
Speaker 1: the first one to describe the conditions. He had a
12:37
Speaker 1: patient who was a middle class German woman who had
12:40
Speaker 1: an altar who was a French aristocrat. So he hypnotized her,
12:44
Speaker 1: brought out the French aristocrat, the animal magnetized her or mesmerism. Yeah,
12:49
Speaker 1: and we did an episode on hypnosis if you want
12:51
Speaker 1: to go check that out. Yeah, it's a very good one. Um.
12:54
Speaker 1: But up until the late eighteen hundreds, about eighteen eighty,
12:59
Speaker 1: they generally thought that what the deal was was that
13:01
Speaker 1: humans had a background consciousness and that was actually greater
13:08
Speaker 1: than our regular primary consciousness. And when that background consciousness
13:12
Speaker 1: got sick, then that's what brought out the gray. Right,
13:18
Speaker 1: that's what mental illness came from. Pretty much. Basically, it
13:21
Speaker 1: was another way of putting the conscious in the subconscious
13:25
Speaker 1: because I mean, and it still today, people believe the
13:28
Speaker 1: subconscious exists and that it's the one that's really running
13:31
Speaker 1: the show. Realize, that's still the belief that it's greater
13:33
Speaker 1: as far as I know, certainly among Freudians. But yeah,
13:36
Speaker 1: that's true. I don't I don't think anyone's really discredited
13:39
Speaker 1: the idea of the subconscious, all right, who knows, Well,
13:43
Speaker 1: sure we're gonna find out here. They're about the same
13:47
Speaker 1: time as that was going on, Um, they started to
13:50
Speaker 1: tie it with childhood trauma, which is pretty spot on.
13:53
Speaker 1: And then a French patient named Louis viev Viva Vive.
14:01
Speaker 1: He was twenty two years old and he had this
14:03
Speaker 1: is in the late eight had six personalities. Doctors just
14:07
Speaker 1: went crazy over this guy. Um, they didn't overlap with
14:11
Speaker 1: their memories. They thought that they were just hypnotic variations
14:15
Speaker 1: of each other. They didn't understand though, at the time,
14:17
Speaker 1: that they were actually completely separate personalities. They thought it
14:22
Speaker 1: was just all parts of Louis, which if you, if
14:26
Speaker 1: you really kind of follow the timeline of um, the
14:30
Speaker 1: I d like they were. We've come back to that
14:34
Speaker 1: understanding of it. Yeah, I guess you're right. You know
14:38
Speaker 1: that it's not like just different personalities. It's just different
14:42
Speaker 1: aspects of a single personality that are kind of given
14:47
Speaker 1: voice in a very literal like different voice in a
14:50
Speaker 1: literal way, right, you know. Yeah, that's a good point.
14:53
Speaker 1: And then after that are actually around the same time.
14:55
Speaker 1: Pierre Janette, another French researcher, UM said, no, these are
15:00
Speaker 1: different personalities and it comes from a trauma that they suffered. Right,
15:05
Speaker 1: So he was kind of hit it early on. Yeah,
15:08
Speaker 1: he I guess he laid the groundwork for the understanding
15:11
Speaker 1: for the next century or so to come UM and
15:15
Speaker 1: then Uh. It wasn't until nineteen o five that somebody
15:18
Speaker 1: claimed to cure a person with UM dissociative identity disorder
15:22
Speaker 1: again back then known as multiple personality disorder UM, a
15:27
Speaker 1: guy named Morton Prince Morty Prince not Martin, Prince Morton
15:31
Speaker 1: Prince UM. He basically said that using hypnosis he was
15:36
Speaker 1: able to UM coax out the very easily coax out
15:41
Speaker 1: the altars. Because this is something like very early on,
15:45
Speaker 1: dissociative identity disorder and hypnosis were basically just went hand
15:48
Speaker 1: in hand, and UM alienists believed that they could use
15:53
Speaker 1: hypnosis to very easily draw out the altars, which they
15:57
Speaker 1: could who am I talking to now exactly? Or I
16:00
Speaker 1: want to talk to you know this personality and then
16:03
Speaker 1: start confronting those personalities and convincing them to integrate into
16:08
Speaker 1: the host personality. And then once you had full successful integration,
16:13
Speaker 1: you had a reunited whole host person who was just
16:18
Speaker 1: one personality. But the the the key is is that
16:22
Speaker 1: they're using hypnosis, and hypnosis doesn't isn't real, right, So
16:29
Speaker 1: like we have a huge clue here to a mystery
16:32
Speaker 1: of what exactly is going on. But before anybody really
16:36
Speaker 1: kind of faces that and confronts it um and starts
16:40
Speaker 1: to really truly treat associative identity disorder on its face
16:45
Speaker 1: or at its root. It treated it on its face.
16:48
Speaker 1: Psychiatry took a really like it just went all in
16:53
Speaker 1: and doubled down on the most um, the sexiest craziest
16:59
Speaker 1: versions against come up with. And it did this in
17:02
Speaker 1: the fifties. Um, and we'll tell you how right after
17:05
Speaker 1: this message, so Chuck, psychiatry is about to say, multiple
17:13
Speaker 1: multiple personality disorder is um exactly what it looks like.
17:19
Speaker 1: Some of these people are beyond looney. This guy over
17:23
Speaker 1: here as a hundred personalities and seven of them are dogs,
17:26
Speaker 1: different dogs. Can you believe this? And uh, these these
17:31
Speaker 1: cases are going to start to grow by leaps and
17:33
Speaker 1: bounds in number. And it all can be traced back
17:35
Speaker 1: to a single book which is based on single case history. Yeah,
17:41
Speaker 1: well a couple of books. Yeah. But to start, it
17:44
Speaker 1: was all about Eve, that's right, the Three Faces of Eve.
17:49
Speaker 1: It was a book written in seven by two psychiatrists,
17:53
Speaker 1: and it was about a woman whose real name was
17:56
Speaker 1: Chris Costner size more, who may or may not be
17:59
Speaker 1: related to Kevin Costner. Neither I nor anybody on the
18:02
Speaker 1: internet appears to know for sure. Oh really I looked
18:05
Speaker 1: and nobody all there are questions. I can't believe I
18:07
Speaker 1: didn't think to look that up. Yeah Costner, Sure, there's
18:10
Speaker 1: like two of them, Kevin and who Chris Okay, Um,
18:16
Speaker 1: so she uh Chris Costner size More went um by
18:19
Speaker 1: the name of Eva White, or at least that's what
18:21
Speaker 1: they called her in the book, although funnily I didn't
18:24
Speaker 1: look up to see whether or not she's related to
18:26
Speaker 1: Tom size More, just Kevin Costner. Yeah, did I say
18:30
Speaker 1: Eva White? I meant Eve White? Yeah, I might said Eve.
18:33
Speaker 1: Either way, it's Eve White. And she was referred because
18:37
Speaker 1: she had headaches amnesia, and she worked with these two
18:41
Speaker 1: psychiatrists and a couple of altars emerged and they wrote
18:46
Speaker 1: a book. Well they supposedly cured her and reintegrated them
18:51
Speaker 1: back into one host person. But they wrote a book
18:55
Speaker 1: really quickly that exploded on the scene, super popular, made
18:59
Speaker 1: them a ton of money. Uh, there was a big
19:01
Speaker 1: blockbuster movie. Um, it was just it took over, well
19:07
Speaker 1: not took over, but it made a huge splash in
19:11
Speaker 1: just people's consciousness about what this is like for the
19:16
Speaker 1: first time. It was everyone you know, like you said,
19:19
Speaker 1: it's kind of super sexy and interesting and people were
19:22
Speaker 1: captivated by this new disease. And this Eve woman who
19:26
Speaker 1: was really three women and one right there was Eve
19:33
Speaker 1: Peggy and I can't remember the other one, but um
19:36
Speaker 1: one was like a good girl, uh, the other one
19:40
Speaker 1: was like a bad girl or a tough girl. And
19:43
Speaker 1: then the host was just kind of a combination of
19:46
Speaker 1: the two. Yeah, and she's still alive, she still is well.
19:50
Speaker 1: She um so that this doctor, um was it thig Pen. Yeah,
19:57
Speaker 1: doctor Thigpen. Um, it was treating her Corbett Thigpen and
20:02
Speaker 1: a colleague. I believe his name is Henny Cleckly. Seriously,
20:09
Speaker 1: so um Thigpen was the one who wrote, like really
20:13
Speaker 1: went off the deep end with the book and then
20:15
Speaker 1: sold the ladies life rights without her approval to Hollywood,
20:20
Speaker 1: and they made this story or this movie and like
20:22
Speaker 1: you said, it was Fox, Yeah it was, and it was.
20:26
Speaker 1: It made a pretty big splash, both the book and
20:28
Speaker 1: the movie. Um. And she came out and wrote a
20:32
Speaker 1: book called I'm Eve and said, Dude, this guy is
20:35
Speaker 1: a total fraud, Like, yes, I do have multiple personalities,
20:40
Speaker 1: but they didn't cure me. Like this guy kept insisting
20:44
Speaker 1: I was cured. It didn't work. He uh, he shot
20:47
Speaker 1: me up with sodium pentethal and like just used the
20:50
Speaker 1: power of suggestion. Um. And he's just a huckster, basically
20:55
Speaker 1: he was after the story. UM. But here I am
20:59
Speaker 1: left with my conditions still. Yeah. And she had reportedly suffered,
21:03
Speaker 1: UM witnessed a bad accident and witness to deaths as
21:06
Speaker 1: a child, and that's where hers was born. So UM
21:11
Speaker 1: that set the stage that for popular consciousness to UM
21:16
Speaker 1: kind of come to understand multiple personality disorder, which again
21:20
Speaker 1: that's what it was called at the time. UM. And
21:22
Speaker 1: I mean it was all over the place, like people
21:24
Speaker 1: just people were just aware of it, whereas they hadn't
21:28
Speaker 1: been before. UM. And it was kind of like a
21:33
Speaker 1: one two punch. You had all about Eve and the fifties,
21:36
Speaker 1: and then about fifteen years later you had Sybil. And
21:40
Speaker 1: Sybil was the one that blew this thing wide open.
21:44
Speaker 1: It just happened, I guess, to arrive at a time
21:47
Speaker 1: when UM America was really ready to UM undergo or
21:54
Speaker 1: be party to psychological exploitation like big time. Yeah. And
21:59
Speaker 1: in three is when Sybil the book came out, UM
22:02
Speaker 1: written by Oh uh, let's see Flora Rita Schreiber about
22:08
Speaker 1: her treatment with psychiatrist Cornelia Wilbur and about the treatment
22:13
Speaker 1: of the real name was Shirley Mason, and they kept
22:16
Speaker 1: that a secret for many years, Sybil, Yeah, to protect
22:19
Speaker 1: her her identity. Um, but eventually the name came out. Well,
22:23
Speaker 1: she died in the nineties. Yeah, she died ninety breast cancer.
22:27
Speaker 1: But um, she had sixteen personalities. And like I said,
22:32
Speaker 1: Sally Field played her in the movie. It was a
22:34
Speaker 1: big hit. I remember my mom reading the book. It
22:36
Speaker 1: was all the rage in the seventies. Yeah, it was huge, huge,
22:40
Speaker 1: And um, she was actually an artist, a painter, and
22:46
Speaker 1: like taught painting too, I think. But they found a
22:49
Speaker 1: hundred and three paintings in her basement after she died,
22:51
Speaker 1: and she only signed the ones that she felt like
22:55
Speaker 1: she the host had painted, Like, she wouldn't sign the
22:58
Speaker 1: ones that an altar had paint it. So many of
23:00
Speaker 1: them are unsigned. But it's when you look at it,
23:02
Speaker 1: it's really like they're all different, Like some are like realists,
23:05
Speaker 1: some are abstract, some are impressionistic. Really all over the map,
23:11
Speaker 1: and it's just I don't know, kind of a testament
23:13
Speaker 1: to like how real this can be? Is there a
23:15
Speaker 1: website that hosts all of them? Uh? I don't know.
23:18
Speaker 1: I think if you look just look up, you know,
23:21
Speaker 1: hidden paintings of Sybil, you can probably buy them. And
23:24
Speaker 1: that would be what s I B y L is?
23:27
Speaker 1: How they spelled that? No s y B I L Yeah?
23:31
Speaker 1: Um so Sybils the smash hit. It's based on the wave,
23:35
Speaker 1: the first wave that was brought about by all about
23:38
Speaker 1: Eve and the public is um just fully aware of
23:41
Speaker 1: multiple personality disorders like these two are like the cream
23:45
Speaker 1: of the crop. There were tons of made for TV
23:47
Speaker 1: movies and um Donna Hue episodes and all sorts of
23:52
Speaker 1: just chatter about multiple personality disorder, and all of a sudden,
23:57
Speaker 1: the cases go from about two hundred in the medical
24:01
Speaker 1: literature to suddenly eight thousand after the movie Sybyl comes out,
24:07
Speaker 1: and it seems like every psychiatrist has a patient with
24:12
Speaker 1: multiple personality disorder. And because of all this sensationalism that
24:17
Speaker 1: went along with it, there are fortunately a caudra of
24:21
Speaker 1: serious psychiatrists and psychologists who said, wait a minute, what,
24:25
Speaker 1: like what what what's going on here? Like movies aren't
24:28
Speaker 1: supposed to trigger outbreaks of disorders. Some people explain it
24:33
Speaker 1: away by saying, well, there, these people may have been
24:37
Speaker 1: suffering like this. They didn't have a name to associate
24:40
Speaker 1: with her. The movie gave him the name so they
24:42
Speaker 1: could go to the doctor and speak to it and
24:44
Speaker 1: be treated. Right. Um, that is one explanation. The problem
24:48
Speaker 1: is the explanation that this was a real phenomenon and
24:52
Speaker 1: not like some sort of um, what are they call,
24:57
Speaker 1: I guess outbreak of maths hysteria a little bit? Yeah, um,
25:02
Speaker 1: And this is a no way to diminish anybody who's
25:03
Speaker 1: suffering mentally in any way. Yeah, yeah, of course. But
25:07
Speaker 1: I'm talking about the specific moment in history in the
25:10
Speaker 1: seventies in the West where there was an outbreak of
25:13
Speaker 1: multiple personality disorder cases. Um. The idea that it was
25:17
Speaker 1: a real thing was definitely undermined by the civil case itself, which,
25:24
Speaker 1: like contemporaneously some psychiatrists said, this isn't a peer reviewed
25:29
Speaker 1: case history, and we think this is basically all just
25:32
Speaker 1: made up. Well, the lid was blown off, specifically by
25:36
Speaker 1: a single doctor in Sybil's case, Dr Herbert Spiegel apparently
25:41
Speaker 1: treated um Sybil, well, it's not a real name, but
25:44
Speaker 1: we'll call her Sibil. While the Uh Wilbur was out
25:49
Speaker 1: of town and he was like, you know what, this
25:52
Speaker 1: doesn't add up? He said, these case notes. Yeah, he said,
25:55
Speaker 1: it seems like she's really highly suggestible. Uh. It seems
25:59
Speaker 1: like you gave her dyan pentethal and she's addicted to that,
26:03
Speaker 1: and it seems like you might have not necessarily on
26:07
Speaker 1: purpose coached her into saying these things. Well, there's there
26:11
Speaker 1: was um at least one instance where that fill in
26:14
Speaker 1: doctor who was treating um uh Sybil. Sybil said that
26:21
Speaker 1: they were in a session and Sybil said, um, which
26:23
Speaker 1: which personality you want me to be? Uh? Which it's
26:27
Speaker 1: not something you say when you can't control your altars uh.
26:31
Speaker 1: And then secondly there was in the case notes there
26:34
Speaker 1: was a reference to a note or a statement by
26:38
Speaker 1: Sybil to her doctor Dr Wilbur who said, I do
26:42
Speaker 1: not even have a double. I am all of them.
26:45
Speaker 1: I've been lying in my pretense of them. And Dr
26:48
Speaker 1: Wilbur noted that she wrote this up to avoidance behavior,
26:53
Speaker 1: that Sybil was trying to avoid having to confront reintegrating
26:57
Speaker 1: her her personalities, and that's why she was saying that
26:59
Speaker 1: she was lying um. So, when all of this kind
27:02
Speaker 1: of came out and was added up and combined with
27:06
Speaker 1: this outbreak of um multiple personality disorder cases in the
27:13
Speaker 1: late seventies early eighties, it was it was pretty damning.
27:17
Speaker 1: But then when it became obvious that satanic ritual abuse,
27:22
Speaker 1: that moral panic that happened was following right on the
27:25
Speaker 1: heels of this, I think the scientific community stepped back
27:30
Speaker 1: and said, Okay, America's is crazy, well and not in
27:35
Speaker 1: the mental health problem kind of way, like just just crazy. Yeah.
27:40
Speaker 1: I think I think a lot of that came about
27:42
Speaker 1: because the it started to become a legal defense, uh,
27:46
Speaker 1: and people started explaining way very bad behaviors on altars
27:51
Speaker 1: and claiming in court like it wasn't me that killed
27:54
Speaker 1: my wife, it was Tony. Man. It sounds like we're
27:57
Speaker 1: talking about the Lifetime Movie Network here, you know, dud,
28:00
Speaker 1: This Lifetime Movie Network is all over these stories. I
28:04
Speaker 1: bet you there's quite a few of those movies out there. Right.
28:06
Speaker 1: So all this is going on, it becomes very apparent
28:10
Speaker 1: that this isn't a real thing. Um And fortunately for
28:14
Speaker 1: the people who actually do suffer from this disorder, psychiatry said,
28:19
Speaker 1: all right, let's get rid of the multiple personality disorder moniker,
28:24
Speaker 1: and we're gonna rename it dissociative identity disorder. We're gonna
28:27
Speaker 1: completely remove it from what just happened because that was pitiful,
28:33
Speaker 1: and um, we're gonna get down to basics. We're gonna
28:36
Speaker 1: go back to the way of addressing this, of viewing
28:41
Speaker 1: this that um, the doctor who described Louis Vivey came
28:48
Speaker 1: up with all the way back in that it's just
28:52
Speaker 1: variations of the host personality, not truly separate personalities, and
28:56
Speaker 1: that if we treat the underlying cause or even just
29:00
Speaker 1: the co morbid symptoms drug addiction, alcoholism, depression, the hallucinations,
29:06
Speaker 1: the mood swings, anxiety, if we treat all this, most
29:10
Speaker 1: likely the depression identity disorders also going to be treated
29:13
Speaker 1: in kind. Yeah. I think another thing that lended itself
29:17
Speaker 1: to that too, where doctor started being sued in the
29:20
Speaker 1: nineties by people saying, wait a minute, you've got me
29:22
Speaker 1: on these drugs, you're hypnotizing me. You're saying, you're calling
29:27
Speaker 1: coercing me into calling out these altars, and so I'm
29:30
Speaker 1: gonna sue you. Yeah, I'm glad you said that, because
29:33
Speaker 1: it is worth revisiting I don't think we've really laid
29:35
Speaker 1: this at the feet of psychiatrists enough. There were people
29:38
Speaker 1: who saw this movie who were feeling this way, who
29:42
Speaker 1: maybe felt like they they had more than one personality
29:47
Speaker 1: and went to and I think everyone feels that way
29:49
Speaker 1: a little bit sometimes, you know. But if you're a
29:51
Speaker 1: highly suggestible person and you see this movie and you
29:55
Speaker 1: start thinking like, wow, maybe that's what I have, and
29:57
Speaker 1: they inject you with Sodian pentethal right, you go to
30:00
Speaker 1: a medical professional, that medical professional isn't supposed to be like, yeah, yeah,
30:04
Speaker 1: you have that. And and this one's named Tim. Tim
30:07
Speaker 1: is very aggressive personality. I can see Tim coming out now.
30:11
Speaker 1: And then all of a sudden, the person's like Tim, Like, yes,
30:15
Speaker 1: that person's life has been altered, probably for the negative,
30:20
Speaker 1: because of a um, at the very least, a dubious
30:25
Speaker 1: medical expert um. And yes, so of course they were sued,
30:28
Speaker 1: and they should have been sued. It was a really
30:30
Speaker 1: dark spot in the history of psychiatry, which has a
30:33
Speaker 1: lot of dark spots on its history. Frankly, you know
30:37
Speaker 1: this was this was one of them. But like I said, again, um,
30:40
Speaker 1: there were a group of psychiatrists who said, no, this
30:44
Speaker 1: is there's something real here. We've just been looking at
30:47
Speaker 1: it the wrong way. We allowed it to become sensationalized.
30:50
Speaker 1: We need to learn that lesson. But at the same time,
30:52
Speaker 1: we need to identify the people who really are suffering
30:55
Speaker 1: from this and figure out how to help them. Uh,
30:58
Speaker 1: and we'll figure out we'll talk about how they They
31:00
Speaker 1: figured it out right after this. Okay, Chuck, So now
31:06
Speaker 1: we're at they've renamed multiple personality disorder and now it's
31:10
Speaker 1: UM dissociative identity disorder. So let's talk about how it's treated,
31:15
Speaker 1: how it manifests, what it is. So the I guess
31:18
Speaker 1: the modern understanding from what I can tell, seems to
31:22
Speaker 1: be that UM dissociative identity disorder is a person who
31:29
Speaker 1: has well, let's talk about personality. What identity is? Okay,
31:34
Speaker 1: what if your identity is basically the a script that
31:40
Speaker 1: you've been equipped with that's been developed and refined, a nuance,
31:44
Speaker 1: but also very much fertilized and solidified over the years,
31:49
Speaker 1: so that when you are faced with any any anything
31:54
Speaker 1: in life, you're going to react in a prescribe predictable way.
31:58
Speaker 1: That's your identity. Now, what if your identity is such
32:02
Speaker 1: that UM it doesn't handle stress very well, but you're
32:07
Speaker 1: still confronted with stress. But that doesn't but handling stress
32:13
Speaker 1: isn't part of that script that makes up your identity. Well,
32:16
Speaker 1: in the case of a very very extreme case, it's
32:19
Speaker 1: possible that a person will subsume their normal personality and
32:25
Speaker 1: draw out some aspect that isn't predictable, that isn't prescribed,
32:29
Speaker 1: but it's still part of themselves and put that front
32:32
Speaker 1: and center. Deal with that stress, and it might cuss
32:36
Speaker 1: out the person like a psychiatrist who's confronting them with
32:39
Speaker 1: the stress, and may be very protective of that personality.
32:43
Speaker 1: But the point is it's still part of that single person.
32:47
Speaker 1: It's just a different aspect showing when you take it
32:52
Speaker 1: to its extreme conclusion, what you're looking at then are
32:55
Speaker 1: two different personalities, split personalities, or multiple personalities, right, That's
33:02
Speaker 1: apparently what dissociative identity disorder is. So are you saying
33:07
Speaker 1: you don't believe that when someone comes out in a
33:10
Speaker 1: British accent and says my name is Rob, Like, that's
33:13
Speaker 1: not real. I don't think the word real is a
33:16
Speaker 1: good word because I think that that person it's real,
33:20
Speaker 1: and that's reality right there. You know. I mean, like,
33:23
Speaker 1: if if a person is experiencing a different personality and
33:26
Speaker 1: it happens to be a British guy named Rob, that's
33:29
Speaker 1: the reality, right then. I don't think these people who
33:32
Speaker 1: have dissociative identity disorder are faking. I don't think it's
33:36
Speaker 1: made up. I don't think they're necessarily playing along. I
33:39
Speaker 1: think that's what happened in the eighties. Everybody was just
33:42
Speaker 1: kind of playing along. But I think if you actually
33:45
Speaker 1: have dissociative identity disorder, like this is your experience, this
33:49
Speaker 1: is reality to you, like you do feel detached from
33:52
Speaker 1: your life, you do have missing time, like you do
33:57
Speaker 1: experience this, So yes, it's real for you. It's more
34:00
Speaker 1: how the psychiatric community or the mental health community has
34:05
Speaker 1: to view the associative identity disorder in order to treat it.
34:09
Speaker 1: That it isn't that they aren't separate personalities, because you
34:12
Speaker 1: can basically, um, that's tantamount to saying you're possessed by
34:16
Speaker 1: a demon that's a whole other person in there with you,
34:19
Speaker 1: and that's just not the case. And if you view
34:20
Speaker 1: it like that, you're not going to be able to
34:22
Speaker 1: treat it. Did you find anyone famous with it. No,
34:25
Speaker 1: did you herschell Walker? No? Really, yeah, you knew about that, right. Uh. No,
34:30
Speaker 1: famous former Georgia Bulldog running back an NFL star, herschel Walker.
34:35
Speaker 1: He suffers from d I D and he wrote a
34:38
Speaker 1: book called Breaking Free. And he has no memory of
34:43
Speaker 1: winning the Heisman Trophy. Oh no, he has no memory
34:46
Speaker 1: of putting a gun to his wife's head something that's
34:49
Speaker 1: happened in his life. Uh, no memory of any of
34:51
Speaker 1: these things. And he says he has as many as
34:55
Speaker 1: twelve altars. And um, his his wife. I don't know
35:00
Speaker 1: if they're still together. I don't think so. But his
35:03
Speaker 1: wife in many years thinks like it all makes sense now.
35:06
Speaker 1: Like when she finally he came out with this and
35:08
Speaker 1: he just came out with a few years ago, she
35:11
Speaker 1: was like, well, this totally makes sense because I saw
35:13
Speaker 1: very different people through the course of our marriage out
35:16
Speaker 1: of nowhere that made no sense. And she's like, it
35:19
Speaker 1: was not a mood swing. And um he Uh. He's
35:26
Speaker 1: famous for not just being a football player, Like he
35:29
Speaker 1: was into ballet. He went to FBI school, He was
35:34
Speaker 1: an Olympic bobs letter. What he's he's done all these
35:37
Speaker 1: things he was He's a mixed martial artist now and
35:40
Speaker 1: he thinks that these altars are you know, basically why
35:44
Speaker 1: he has so many like varying interest in life. Yeah,
35:48
Speaker 1: that is really fascinating. So what do you think about it?
35:52
Speaker 1: What's your take on to socio by Danny disorder? Well,
35:55
Speaker 1: I'm not sure i'd see the difference between Like that's
35:59
Speaker 1: what a sort of told disorder is, is someone believing
36:03
Speaker 1: something about themselves. Like I guess I don't see the
36:06
Speaker 1: difference between someone thinking they have these different personalities. Like
36:11
Speaker 1: a personality isn't a tangible thing anyway, Like you can't
36:15
Speaker 1: touch it. So if someone believes they have four different personalities,
36:20
Speaker 1: then they may as well have four different personalities. Like
36:24
Speaker 1: I get you what you're saying. I guess it's all
36:26
Speaker 1: part of that person. But if it's a disorder, that
36:30
Speaker 1: means it's causing a problem. I think the fact that
36:37
Speaker 1: when I see cases of what looks like real d
36:40
Speaker 1: I d like herschel Walker no memory of of certain things,
36:45
Speaker 1: like it's it's certainly more powerful than you know. That's
36:48
Speaker 1: bad Chuck coming out because I don't deal what stressed. Well,
36:51
Speaker 1: we'll call him tony, you know, but if I blacked
36:54
Speaker 1: out and didn't remember my actions for several days, and
36:58
Speaker 1: those actions included putting a gun to my wife's said,
37:01
Speaker 1: then that's a whole different thing, you know, because I'm
37:04
Speaker 1: certainly moody. We all know bad Chuck, well know Tony,
37:09
Speaker 1: Tony nice? All right, Well, I guess that's it about
37:13
Speaker 1: dissociative identity disorder. If you want to learn more about it,
37:16
Speaker 1: type those words in the search part how stuffworks dot
37:18
Speaker 1: com and they'll bring up this article. And since I
37:19
Speaker 1: said search parts, time for listener mail. Uh, I'm gonna
37:25
Speaker 1: call this real world advice for Tony. This is guy's
37:29
Speaker 1: name is Tony? Oh yeah, total accident. Hey, guys, I
37:33
Speaker 1: recently returned from to the States from living in the
37:37
Speaker 1: Republic of Korea, mostly teaching English there for the last
37:40
Speaker 1: four years. Returned home to get a job different from that.
37:45
Speaker 1: And now that I'm at home, I can't figure out
37:48
Speaker 1: what to do to give you context. I've been actively
37:50
Speaker 1: interviewing with all sorts of companies, organizations, and firms positions
37:54
Speaker 1: and marketing, sales, business development, finance, consulting. Anyway, I find
37:59
Speaker 1: most of those roles to be too boring. I also
38:02
Speaker 1: feel pressured in burden because I studied engineering at Columbia
38:05
Speaker 1: University and feel a burden to be successful quote unquote,
38:09
Speaker 1: I am very much stuck in a rut looking for
38:11
Speaker 1: a job, uh, not excited by my prospects and asking
38:15
Speaker 1: what do I want to do. I don't really want
38:18
Speaker 1: to go back to school because I can't afford to
38:19
Speaker 1: pay for a master's degree, especially if I'm not certain
38:24
Speaker 1: or pretty certain that that advanced degree will improve my situation.
38:27
Speaker 1: So I'm emailing you guys because I'm an advocer and
38:31
Speaker 1: I think we share similar perspectives on things, and you
38:34
Speaker 1: have great careers that are thrilling and aspirable. True. So
38:40
Speaker 1: I'm not quite saying I want to be you guys
38:41
Speaker 1: or I want your jobs, but I see both these
38:43
Speaker 1: people that are really interesting, salt of the earth folk
38:46
Speaker 1: who can relate to my situation more so than my
38:49
Speaker 1: investment management, consulting, law, youring med school friends. So Tony H.
38:54
Speaker 1: De Frieda's wants to know what he should do. Man,
38:57
Speaker 1: that's a tough one. I've actually been thinking about this
39:00
Speaker 1: TuS email for a couple of days now. Yeah, Okay,
39:04
Speaker 1: I mean like he's asking for help, so give it
39:06
Speaker 1: to him. Well, my first bit of advice would be
39:11
Speaker 1: to narrow down your scope a little bit. If you
39:14
Speaker 1: studied engineering and you're looking at marketing, sales, business development, finance, consulting,
39:20
Speaker 1: I think you're casting your net a little too wide. Yeah,
39:24
Speaker 1: So my first bit of advice is to narrow that down,
39:26
Speaker 1: and my second bit of advice is to narrow it
39:28
Speaker 1: down based on often tell people like what do you what,
39:32
Speaker 1: what do you love, and what would you love to do?
39:34
Speaker 1: Ideally what they call blue sky territory here in the
39:38
Speaker 1: corporate world. It sounds like also to me, you're asking
39:40
Speaker 1: a lot of people, but you're spending a lot of
39:42
Speaker 1: time like just keeping it at the forty foot level.
39:47
Speaker 1: Like maybe you sit for a little while with a
39:49
Speaker 1: legal pen a pen and like be quiet and gather
39:54
Speaker 1: your thoughts and then brainstorm after that, just even for
39:59
Speaker 1: like a half hour twenty minutes something like that. If
40:02
Speaker 1: it's for your future that you're thinking about, you could
40:05
Speaker 1: probably come up with a half hour to dedicate just
40:07
Speaker 1: to that. But just turn everything off and like really
40:10
Speaker 1: focus inward and say what do you want to do,
40:13
Speaker 1: and then go for that and don't feel obligated to
40:15
Speaker 1: use your degree. Most people can go to college, don't
40:18
Speaker 1: use the degree that they got. It's more like they
40:20
Speaker 1: went through college to show they can go through college,
40:24
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, and he didn't lift engineer anywhere and
40:27
Speaker 1: what he was looking into, even though that's what his
40:29
Speaker 1: degrees in. Yeah. Here's the other thing too, there are
40:32
Speaker 1: very few um career choices or life paths that go
40:39
Speaker 1: that go absolutely nowhere. And you shouldn't be afraid to
40:43
Speaker 1: take steps that you that aren't necessarily the prescribed way
40:48
Speaker 1: to go. Yeah, and don't be worried about locking yourself
40:53
Speaker 1: in for life necessarily, you know, like, try something out
40:56
Speaker 1: that you love and it may bear fruit, and if
41:00
Speaker 1: it doesn't work, you can always just go get like
41:02
Speaker 1: a guaranteed job or something afterward. Yeah. Yeah, And something
41:06
Speaker 1: that interests you now isn't necessarily going to interest you
41:08
Speaker 1: five years from now. So yeah, I think you're worrying
41:11
Speaker 1: too much, Tony, or Tony if this was a very
41:14
Speaker 1: sly way of trying to get the word out with
41:16
Speaker 1: your resume and you're out there and you want to
41:22
Speaker 1: Columbia University grad engineering degree, who's interested in sales and
41:27
Speaker 1: business development and finance? Let us know, interested in anything
41:30
Speaker 1: see captain ing whatever, Uh, so spend some time be
41:35
Speaker 1: quiet with your thoughts, trying decide what you love and
41:37
Speaker 1: if you could make a career out of that. And uh,
41:40
Speaker 1: if we hear anything, then we'll let you know. It
41:42
Speaker 1: sounds like you're up for adventure because you lived in Korea.
41:46
Speaker 1: We have him for garden seed. Yeah, we gave him
41:48
Speaker 1: a lot of advice here. Yeah, this is plenty. Take
41:51
Speaker 1: some of that and do something with it, Tony. Let
41:53
Speaker 1: us know how it goes. Please. Uh. If you have
41:56
Speaker 1: made any kind of life choice or decision based on
41:59
Speaker 1: something Chuck and I and said, we want to know
42:01
Speaker 1: how that went. You can tweet to us at s
42:03
Speaker 1: Y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook
42:05
Speaker 1: dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know, send us an
42:08
Speaker 1: email the Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com, check out
42:10
Speaker 1: our Josh and Chuck YouTube channel, and hang out with
42:13
Speaker 1: us at our home on the web. Stuff you Should
42:15
Speaker 1: Know dot com for more on this and thousands of
42:22
Speaker 1: other topics. Is it how Stuff Works dot com