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Multiple Personality
Mirrors of a New Model of Mind?
From: Investigations; Institute of Noetic Sciences
page 2
Today, we seem to be witnessing a return to center
stage of a number of previously discarded concepts that all seem to connect
with each other in curious ways. One might say that one part of the stage was
set by the split-brain data, which once again opened up the concept of the
divided mind. Then the rise of Cognitive Science in the 1970's also helped to
place a concern with mental processes and consciousness back in the center of
things. Also during the 1970's, the data on and respectability of hypnosis
research grew and led to greater attention being placed on the concept of
dissociation, which is at the core of hypnotic phenomena, once again.
In this issue of Investigations, we will present an overview of the
contemporary scene regarding the topic of Multiple Personality. There are
several events which have occurred of late to cause a growing number of
professionals to re-evaluate their point of view on the topic. More frequent
diagnosis of the phenomenon is but one aspect of this sudden increase in
interest. Another aspect involves the growing body of research data showing
that multiples display unusual degrees of variation in physiological,
neurological and immune system variables when the switch. Further the amount of
professional attention being devoted to the subject in recent years has grown
enormously. In May of 1984, the American Psychiatric Association at its Annual
Meeting in Los Angeles devoted an unusually large proportion of its program to
the topic: 2 whole days of a pre-conference workshop and 2 major symposia at
the convention itself. Then in September of 1984, the First International
Conference on Multiple Personality Dissociative States was held in Chicago.
The meeting was organized by Dr. Bennett Braun of Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's
hospital, which co-sponsored the event. The Institute of noetic Sciences
provided partial financial backing for the event and for next year's proposed
Second International Conference. Further, several established medical and
psychiatric journals devoted entire issues to the recent research. To produce
this issue, Investigations attended these meetings, researched all the
recent journals and interviewed in person between 20 and 30 of the leading
figures in the field. What follows, therefore, should provide the reader with a
comprehensive update - including data from the early history of the field right
up to the present.
Social Scientific Implications of Multiple
Personality
The social implications of this sudden surge in interest are quite complex
since it seems definitely connected to the recent awareness in the culture of
the phenomena of child abuse and incest. The emergence in the media of more and
more reports on the incidence of child abuse and incest in the U.S. has reached
a degree that almost daily provides yet another set of shocking headlines.
Perhaps it is this latter phenomenon that alerted the therapeutic professions
because now not one but two phenomena previously seen as rare seem to be seen
in unheard-of-numbers all over the U.S.: Child Abuse and Multiple Personality.
As we now know, the two are intimately connected with one another. Virtually
everyone who is diagnosed as being multiple has been severely physically and
sexually abuse - though not everyone who is abused becomes multiple. But, one
might well ask, why are these phenomena being seen with such frequency today?
There is clearly a darker side to our culture that we would rather not look at.
Unfortunately, the dual phenomenon of abuse and multiplicity leave us with no
other choice. The almost daily onslaught of statistics from the courts and the
media now leave little doubt that battered children and battered wives are all
too common. What is at the root of all this obscene inhumanity? Is there some
deeper process at work in the culture that we refuse to face? What aspects of
the human psyche have run amok in this supposedly rational and civilized
culture? People stretch for answers to these questions and the queues run the
gamut from alcoholism to possession and various sicknesses in between. As the
story unfolds within these pages, these questions will occur to the reader
again and again. There are no easy answers to any of these questions, but it
may well be that a deeper understanding of what the phenomenon of Dissociation
is, how it works and what can drive it can throw some light on these troubling
questions. Perhaps then we won't have to remain at the mercy of the pathologies
of dissociation involved not only in abuse and multiplicity, but also in other
forms of extreme inhuman behavior, and can learn instead to tap into the
productive and positive uses of this part of our minds.
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