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Multiple Personality Disorder and Buddhism
I just wanted to pose an idea to you guys and get your input. I've been reading about MPD, it's pretty amazing stuff. MRI studies have shown that when people with MPD 'switch' personalities that their brain activity actually mirror that of another person. They had normal people try it by pretending that they were someone else as intensely as possible, and the brain activity showed no significant change.
So for all intensive purposes, these people become other people. In the movies they show people with 2 or 3 personalities, but on average, women with MPD have 17, while men have 8. In one case, a patient was reported to have over 100 different personalities.
In some cases, the personalities are aware of each other, while in others they are completely unaware of the other's presence. The third alternative is that some of the personalities are aware of each other while others are not.
My question to you is what if someone had MPD with an infinite number of personalities, never being the same person twice, and being unaware of any other personalities? Maybe each personality lasts one lifetime? Rebirth?!
Just imagine someone telling you "Marmalade, you're not actually real, you're just a part of John Doe."
Some MPD patients feared 'integrating' with their other personalities because they considered integration as synonymous with death.
Maybe Samsara = Multiple Personality Disorder
DUN DUN DUUUUUUUNNNNN!!!
So for all intensive purposes, these people become other people. In the movies they show people with 2 or 3 personalities, but on average, women with MPD have 17, while men have 8. In one case, a patient was reported to have over 100 different personalities.
In some cases, the personalities are aware of each other, while in others they are completely unaware of the other's presence. The third alternative is that some of the personalities are aware of each other while others are not.
My question to you is what if someone had MPD with an infinite number of personalities, never being the same person twice, and being unaware of any other personalities? Maybe each personality lasts one lifetime? Rebirth?!
Just imagine someone telling you "Marmalade, you're not actually real, you're just a part of John Doe."
Some MPD patients feared 'integrating' with their other personalities because they considered integration as synonymous with death.
Maybe Samsara = Multiple Personality Disorder
DUN DUN DUUUUUUUNNNNN!!!
0
Comments
1) Maybe each of the different personalities are a different being? All of the different beings "in" (for lack of a better word) one person perhaps are bound by some kind of past kamma they shared?
2) Maybe each of the different personalities are the personalities that pertained to that person's past lives, due to very strong attachment they hold on to them for up to 100 (or more) lifetimes.
But...it's all just speculation, perhaps interesting, but it is just entertainment really...not useful for our own practice to think about. Unless of course we are the MPD-afflicted person.
There is significant controversy over whether 'MPD' as presented in the media actually exists. As far as I know, all reported cases occur in people in therapy, and many clinicians and therapists argue that it is iatrogenic - 'caused by' therapy. The explanation is that therapists who believe in 'MPD' are looking for evidence of it, and they unconsciously or accidentally or deliberately 'encourage' and reward the person for producing symptoms and making statements that are consistent with their belief in MPD. Certainly the snapshots of therapy that I have seen in action with 'sufferers' of MPD support this hypothesis.
The neurological evidence of MRI scans isn't convincing to me. Asking people without MPD to pretend that they are different personalities is not the same as the mechanism that is proposed to explain DID. DID develops over years - sometimes from infanthood. The attributing of differing personalities to dissociated experiences may also occur during therapy over several years. People with DID therefore have many years of neurological programming that are then identified in MRI scans. They are not pretending, they genuinely believe that they have MPD, even if they haven't.
The differing MRI scan results are just the same as comparing the MRI scans of monastics after 25 years of meditation practice to the scans of novices who have been practising for 25 days. They differ because of experience and skill, just as, in my opinion the DID sufferers' MRIs differ because of experience and ability to dissociate.
In terms of Buddhist practice, I would suggest that just as Buddhism teaches that the self is a delusion caused by attributing permanence to impermanent phenomena, so people with DID attribute selves to multiple experiences. We're all making the same mistake, but people with DID are doing it more than once.
Anyway it is a fascinating area and one that never fails to capture the imagination!
Metta
Fran
This had been going on since she had been around 9.
I never discovered the true extent of her trauma, but I know it involved both her parents, a brother and other male relatives, and went on into her late teens.
She was eventually diagnosed as having DID in her 40's.
In all this time, although she had been seen by Medics, nobody ever had a lightbulb moment and sent her for psychiatric evaluation.
The 4 personalities she manifested to me were -
Michelle, a kindly, generous, forgiving, compassionate and patient woman, with sky-high tolerance levels, a good word for everyone, and as perfect a nature as you could imagine.
Rick, an angry, verbally violent, shocking, aggressive, confrontational and fiercely protective man, who broached no argument and would cut you down as soon as look at you.
Sandra, a mouthy, petulant, sassy, cheeky and promiscuous woman, with a sense of humour like a trooper, who was loud, raucous and gave as good as she got, in a frustrating yet likeable way.
and Diane.
A 9-year-old little girl who never spoke a word, but saw everything. Audrey thought she could hear and understand, but was unable to speak. She loved dogs, and had a puppy that kept running away.
These were all, I rapidly understood, carefully separated facets of Audrey's own combined temperaments.
We would correspond for hours, and basically, she got me to tell her everything I knew or understood about Buddhism, and its root teachings, and core message.
Sometimes, Rick would come in and absolutely blow me out the water with counter arguments.
Audrey suggested I just let him vent and not antagonise him, but to make my replies gentle. He seemed to respond to that, but didn't like me at all, because I challenged his foundations...
Michelle was on a better wave-length than I was, a lot of the time.
Sandra juts poked fun at me, and ridiculed what I expounded, but not quite enough to be hurtful or offensive. Just enough to try to rip a few holes in stuff....
Audrey suggested I give back as good as I got, and Sandra and I actually had a few laughs....
Diane of course, never put in an appearance, but she apparently liked reading what I wrote, and found it interesting....
She asked me a lot of questions, through Audrey....
I cannot begin to describe much of what we discussed.
It was traumatic, revealing, painful, funny, illuminating, and very, very personal.
Our correspondence tailed off, because Audrey (I discovered through a genuine third-party friend) had manifested other physical ailments, and was in fact a very physically ill woman.
She wrote everything from her bed, rarely got up for any reason other than to tend her precious garden (Rick destroyed it twice, to Audrey's utter devastation, horror and dismay) and lived on her computer.
She had a website running which was basically an on-line comic about a community of dogs, all of whom had bizarre jobs....one was a naval commander, with others as his crew, and some were caretakers and teachers at a school....Dogs featured a lot in Audrey's life.... she adored them...
Correspondence ceased, at one point, and this mutual friend reached me via a website I used to frequent, to advise me that Audrey was very unwell, and couldn't correspond any more. She explained she was in hospital being treated for various long-term ailments, and recovery was either unlikely, or would be a long, protracted and challenging affair.
I never heard from either, again, and have no idea whatever happened to Audrey.
But this one person did much to give me a broader understanding of such matters, and I will never forget my encounter and relationship with her.
Or her other 'friends'.
I still have all her letters to me in my e-mail account.
I cannot bring myself to dispose of them.
I have not connected with a person with MPD as far as I know, but I have a close psychologist friend who helped one in therapy for many years. We've talked at length about the process of integrating the other personas, called alters. They all seemed to revolve around being able to cope with different traumas. If there was a single alter that was the first, it was never found... but my friend approached it by listening to the alters, thanking them for protecting her, and letting them know it was ok to let go and join the "big three" (there were three alters who had connected memories and seemed to form the core (Freudian) ego of the woman)
During the times when the big three were present, they worked on healing the trauma, which sometimes triggered new alters to surface. They all seemed to revolve around a few key traits that she needed in order to emotionally, cognitivly and physically survive the horrible childhood she had. As she healed, the alters felt safe integrating (to some degree) and stopped manifesting. She started with over 70, and by the time she moved away and left therapy she had integrated all but the big three and a few others.
Maybe, but I think it is more likely that Samsara is the ancient idea of a cycle of rebirth, that was around for millennia before The Buddha and which the Buddha provides a clear liberation from.
@Fran45: I see what you're saying, and there's definitely not enough supporting evidence to prove/disprove the existence of MPD or DID. Research on the subject is fairly new; not too long ago, people with DID (or claiming to) would be locked away somewhere and forgotten. Even if DID only results from a therapist's suggestion and reinforcement, does that make it any less real? If someone believes something so much to the point of it manifesting in their reality, don't they in a way bring that something into existence? Are experiences in dreams any less real then awake experiences?
@federica: Thank you for sharing this story. I was fascinated by it. It's much more interesting to hear about it from you instead of reading it in a case study. Maybe it's because your story is much more personal and close.
@fivebells: I think that is very possible. I'd be very interested to see if there's a way to test something like that.
@thickpaper: I guess, but you're just going to take their word for it?
Maybe you should read what I said?
namaste
What do you mean by ancient? You mean such is implied in the most primitive texts?
Do you suppose it even predates writing?
Wikipedia:
The origins of the notion of reincarnation are obscure.<sup id="cite_ref-13" class="reference">[14]</sup> Discussion of the subject appears in the philosophical traditions of India and Greece in the first millennium BCE. In India the concept was probably associated with the early eremitical (sramana) movement before it was adopted by mainstream Brahmin orthodoxy<sup id="cite_ref-14" class="reference">[15]</sup><sup id="cite_ref-15" class="reference">[16]</sup> along with the associated concepts of karma, samsara and moksha.<sup id="cite_ref-16" class="reference">[17]</sup> The early Upanishads (around the middle of the first millennium BCE), Gautam Buddha (after 500 to between 411 and 400 BCE)<sup id="cite_ref-17" class="reference">[18]</sup> and Mahavir the Tirthankar of Jainism (who was older than, but contemporary to the Buddha) continued and developed this reincarnationist tradition in many ways,<sup id="cite_ref-18" class="reference">[19]</sup> as did the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali (sometime after 200 BCE).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reincarnation
You said it was around for millenia before the buddha. "They" would be the people who passed the idea down all those years.
That isn't in historical dispute (Samsara is a Hindu term or older, pre-dating the Buddha by millennia).
What is in dispute in Buddhism is if the Buddha was referring to escaping samsara or escaping the actual idea of samsara.
namaste
I am not and would never dispute the 'reality' of another's subjective experience. There is every reason to believe that many with DID genuinely believe and experience personality changes and experience fugue states.
As I said on another couple of threads, the hallucinations experienced by people with schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders are as real to them as my act of typing this is to me.
As for dream states - I have a life long history of having difficulty telling the difference between dreaming and being awake! When I was younger it was worse as I would frequently ask myself (whilst awake) whether I was dreaming and become disorientated as a result. Fortunately I knew enough to keep those things to myself! Even now I still wake from some dreams and nightmares and have to ask my very tolerant husband whether what I was dreaming or not because it can take a while to reorient myself. I also have lucid dreams which is an interesting phenomena, although I'm not sure how it relates to buddhism.
In addition, regarding dissociation and 'mini fugues', I have experienced both states fairly often in the past, so I wouldn't dispute the reality of those either. In my case, they were both due to severe stress, trauma and depressive disorder. Thankfully, I am largely recovered.
However, I think that these experiences and wanting to understand my mind drew me to psychology and to buddhism, and to a better understanding of mental illness, so they have been beneficial.
Metta
Buddha is ancient, but Samsara is even more ancient than that, as ideas go.
I found this discussion interesting, as someone with some dissociative tendencies. The whole thing is a continuum, and I'm not as far along it as some people I know, and still not as far along as some that I don't, but am sort of peripherally connected to socially. I can say that overcoming the fear of integration was a big component in becoming comfortable with the lack of an essential "self" which survives from moment to moment and millennium to millennium.
It does sort of seem to me that this wasn't posted with the expectation that anybody with DID would come along and read it. It's interesting to read just like any conversation about me would be that I was never intended to participate in. Thanks to federica and aMatt (and the others who mentioned dissociatives they've known) for making me feel a little less like a fascinating hypothetical curiosity in a glass case.
Their brainwaves alter the moment they 'switch', becoming truely another person.
Maybe a glitch in reincarnation, nothing is perfect u know, many soules in one body, instead of one? Maybe that explains the fear of death by integration of all the personalities??
The difference in DID is the existence of fugue. Fugue is a type of amnesia that is often caused by stress. Hence the person with DID is not consciously aware of their actions for varying periods of time, although they appear to be acting consciously in their 'alter'. This does not mean that they are truly different people in an objective sense, simply that conscious experience is discontinuous (hence the term dissociative). In people without DID it takes drugs, alcohol or a bang on the head to induce amnesia; in people with DID the triggers can be many and varied. Trivial and serious.
Hi Cobalt,
I am sorry if my posts have made you feel like an 'interesting case' in a 'glass case'. We were talking hypothetically. I hope that I am mindful of the way that we talk about people with DID - being on the dissociative continuum myself as I posted earlier. I am also familiar with the experience of feeling as if I'm in a glass case
I have a foot in three camps here as someone with mental health difficulties, someone interested in buddhism and as a psychologist. As we all know and the film says 'Its complicated'.
Metta
Fran
Anyway, I wonder if 'waking up' isn't just experientially becoming aware of this state of disassociation. I remember a Western Monk in his talk mention that before one can lose oneself (become enlightened), one must find oneself. One must be integrated. Also another guru would not allow her students to partake in long meditation retreats for at least a year if they had experienced some major trauma, like a death, divorce or major life change. She said that if you're already in 'pieces' the meditation could make it worse and that she did not want to pick up the 'pieces'.
I wonder if not meditation allows 'one' to witness this phenomena, this "no me, no mine", the various phantoms (stimulus response patterns - mental formations) that shadow across the screen of awareness. And to see the dissociative cause-effect phenomena for what it really is, to see the ego (I) for what it is, a memory artifact. To integrate those 'i's' into the 'I' through awareness of them through the 'I' (?), and then somehow allow the 'I' to see itself as just that, a construct built up from a contiguity of 'i's' (hence the gurus warning about 'picking up the pieces' - if you have experienced a major life trauma, eg a death or divorce, then your 'I' is temporarily not your usual 'I', it is a temporary 'i' responding to the magnitude of the trauma - which over time can be integrated into the 'I' (the time heals all idea); this temporary 'i' through the process of intensive mediation can cause mental issues by potentially subsuming the 'I' and in this way disrupting the 'personality') and in this way shattering the belief in personality and paving the way for stream entry. The idea of nothing is permanent (Annica), the idea of unsatisfactoriness (Dukka) and finally the idea of no self (Annata).
Each 'i' is impermanent, created by stimulus-response (cause-effect) glued by memory and reinforced by the environment to seem to be a independent 'I', how unsatisfactory is that, the cause for happiness will eventually become the effect of unhappiness, how unsatisfactory is that, and finally if each 'i' is a cause-effect based rendition of the 5 aggregates and the 'I' is a aggregated construct of these cause-effect processes with delusions of emperor-hood based on memory and environmental inputs (no wonder the Buddha recommended Bhikkus seek solitude and only focus on the Dharma - gotta get those familiar, identity reinforcing environmental inputs out of the way; and deal with the memory fabrications through mindfulness), how unsatisfactory is that, and through meditation and stillness the 'I' is seen for what it really is, the emperor without clothes, not only without clothes (environmental inputs), but without emperor. Just a cause-effect process rolling along in samsara fueled by karma.
I am impressed and educated by your analyses. I happen to be both a D.I.D sufferer and a Buddhist, although because of my past social experiences and limitation, a rather unorthodox one. What I would like to add to your thoughts, is basically the proviso-- or _question_-- can personality as mental/behavioral health specialists understand it simply be equated with the Buddhist ego? I think perhaps this is a point that bears investigation. For one thing, all 'alters' are I. I would think for those of us with this illness, the lack of the I's self-identity is very obvious. But perhaps not. I find it so at least. Terminology is a problem. What you are dealing with *differentially* in the case of D.I.D. sufferers are MULTIPLE SUB-SYSTEMS. To the extent that there is a physical reality, externally, *this* is not the same, and happens on a level distinct to Dharmic insight. It is possible, for instance, for some alters to be aware of the Buddhist truth and some not. What one deals with in assimilating Buddhism as a Multiple is a COMMITTEE kind of situation. For all intents and purposes, these alters are a family of essentially unrelated individuals all occupying the same body.
Mad yogis and Shamans are also not fully disciplined, but in that apparent lack of discipline, there might be on the level of external reality some acceptable and aesthetic human truth. Some Buddhist traditions are more tolerant of this kind of thing. The mystifying thing to me is that one will out-live the Ego, and still must sometimes say 'I' (the name does not matter, the age, the personal details-- but it would be therapeutic to me, as a human trying to live a human life, to give my nameless alters names, since the named is more controllable). For Multiples, this would not be any different than for human beings who are not forced to so identify...
and I will underline that my opinion is that people who deny that Multiples ARE forced, as a reasonably non-selfish way of dealing with Dhukka-- yes, we must not be too proud to accept ourselves as we are, even if ultimately we are not-- are living out a hurtful, petty delusion of their own which causes others suffering-- I simply point out that there is in attitudes of this kind an Other-ing and the Dehumanizing Objectification so common to the life of a Multiple, and to the lives of many of us with similar struggles/ challenges/ particularities. Moreover, it is poor science. (Brainwaves never proved anything, and anyone basing their ideas on that in the first place is mistaking the quality of the evidence. The proof is far-reaching and of a different order, and would necessity a good, sympathetic, open-minded, i.e. scientific, expertise in mental health and some many years of acquaintance with the family of disorders and the individual types. Don't judge 'snippets' of therapy without context!) But I respect your skepticism; please forgive the passion in my advocacy.
I am glad to know that people in the Buddhist tradition are curious about D.I.D. today; I know for sure that Buddhism has a great deal to teach Western psychology. But in general, if one accepts the worlds of Hungry Ghosts, Devas, etc., which I do, there is no real monstrosity or strangeness in D.I.D. or even any substantial gain to Dharma, beyond a possible real growing in compassion and understanding.
I just joined newbuddhist.com, and as I say, I am a relatively ignorant Buddhist, and still beginning to practice-- so thank you all for what I am learning!
Sincerely,
A.
If the alternate personalities only manifest in the therapist's office, what would motivate someone to seek therapy in the first place? There have been cases of people wandering off, going AWOL from their life, as it were, and becoming missing persons. Wherever they end up, when they come back to their basic personality, they have no idea how they got where they are. The rare cases of this I've read about were not cases of amnesia, they were said to be MPD (as it was called then) cases. And as I vaguely recall, having read the book, "Cibyll", which first brought the phenomenon to public attention in the 1960's and 70's, the subject's personalities were manifesting and causing problems in her day-to-day life, which is what eventually lead her to seek therapy.
I've known two people who dissociate. Their episodes were always brief: mere minutes long, perhaps not long enough to earn the diagnosis of DID. But in those dissociative states, they did behave or speak in ways radically different from their standard mode. Both cases had experienced trauma within the first 3 or four years of life. I had read that this is the time when it's most likely that the reaction to trauma will develop into DID or dissociation, but later research may have shown the disorder can develop, as you say, in later years as well, idk. One case was a result of repeated sexual trauma at a tender age, the other was the result of repeated medical trauma.
I have no reason to believe that DID isn't "real".