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SYSK Selects: How Dissociative Identity Disorder Works · Stuff You Should Know

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