April 11, 2020 • 43 mins
Dissociative Identity Disorder was known as multiple personality disorder until a case of mass hysteria brought on by the movie-mad public and unscrupulous psychiatrists led to a stigma over the term. Now psychiatry has gotten serious about the condition. Learn more in this classic episode.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, there everybody. It's me Josh and for this week's
s Y s K Selects, I've chosen our episode on
dissociative identity disorder formerly known as multiple personality disorder. It's
one of those very satisfying episodes where we get to
go behind and undo all of the incorrect things. Everybody
assumes that they know about it, um, which is fun
(00:21):
for us, and I hope it's fun for you to
listen and learn. So away with the show. Welcome to Stuff.
You should know, a production of My Heart Radios How
Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
(00:42):
There's Charles W. Choke Bryant, and there's no is no
one of my altars. No these his own. Dude, Okay,
do you have walters? Okay? Do you no? Not that
I know. I think we've each seen a bit of
an altar in each other. But that's just called us
being jerks every now and then. Bad mood. Yeah, that's
(01:05):
a little different. I was on a forum about a
forum for people with dissociative identity disorder and like the
from what I was reading, you sometimes you feel crowded. Um.
Some people have like felt like they have had altars
like their whole life, as long as they've been around interesting, Um,
(01:26):
sometimes they don't. Like. One of the entries I saw
was like, does your altar have to have a name,
And it was like, I don't necessarily think of them
as people, and another person responded and so that that's
often like an early stage of the process, and then
over time, as they become more pronounced, they end up
adopting names. Or it is uh, super moody or some
(01:51):
other bad behavior that you say is disassociative identity disorder
and you give it a name, Well you don't, your
therapist does yeah, or you might yeah. So it's controversial
and we'll get to that, but um, I guess we
should start off by saying that another name for this
a more popular name, even though it's been uh since
(02:15):
d I D. The original name was multiple personality to
disorder the personality. When I was reading this at first,
I was like, this sounds an awful lot like split personality.
It is. It is. They just renamed it and we'll
see pretty soon why, which is kind of a good
move because from what I can tell, it seems to
(02:35):
be a real thing that underwent a period of intense
exploitation and abuse, so much so that now there's a
lot of people who doubt that it's a real thing, right,
but that there are still people out there who do
suffer from it enough so that psychiatry has said, we
(02:56):
need to change the name and then we just focus
on the people that really have this. Now. Did they
change it because it had a stigma? Really? That was
the only reason? Yeah? Wow, Yeah, there's this excellent article
um on I O nine actually about UM. I think
it's called like the myth of dissociative identity disorder and um,
(03:17):
the myth of multiple personality disorder. Thank you they went
old school, yeah, um, and the lady who wrote it
did a really good job of explaining the controversy around
it and also like the renewal of it as well,
like how it became renewed. But yeah, it was because
it was basically, um exploited and fictionalized by the psychiatric
(03:39):
community a few notable people that we'll get to all
that though. Yeah, so, I mean everybody has heard of
multiple personality disorder thanks to that that period of exploitation
from the fifties to the eighties. Um, so you have
probably a pretty good idea of the concept behind it
of the disorder. To begin with, it's a single person
(04:01):
has their normal, their original UM what's called their host personality,
and sometimes especially under periods of acute psycho social stress,
maybe confronted with stress or something they don't want to
think about or talk about or whatever, another one of
(04:22):
their personalities will emerge and they're generally tied to a
trauma and early life that you may not even know
about until you have therapy that out of your subconscious
right and UM they believe that for dissociative identity disorder,
when it does come about from the result of a trauma,
(04:44):
it comes about as a coping mechanism to protect the
mind because the the host personality simply can't handle dealing
with it. But there is some aspect of that person
which is characterized through another personality that can handle it,
(05:04):
and so that personality will come out to handle those
periods where UM the the person is confronted with those memories. Yeah,
and it can express itself in different ways depending on
UM how severe your disorder is. But generally, if you've
ever seen United States of terra UM, you ever seen
(05:25):
that No, I know of it, but I've never seen
an episode. Emily was way into it. Um, we're talking
about completely new people. But your behavior, your speech, you
can be a different sex, you can have a different accent, um,
different species. Yeah, you could be like a dog technically. UM.
I think that's a little more rare. I would imagine. Yeah. Um.
(05:48):
And there is no timetable. That's um. It doesn't necessarily
happen like right after a trauma. Can come out years later. Um.
And it just there's not an awareness necessarily. Uh, that's
a big one. Well, there's not an awareness of the
host person doesn't have an awareness of the altars coming out.
Sometimes they do sometimes, but the altars usually are aware
(06:11):
of the other altars and the host. And that was
like it was in the United States of Tara. Yeah,
sometimes the um the altars, which I don't know if
we specifically said or not yet, but an altar is
one of these non one of the other personalities within
the host personality, and there's there's usually at least two others.
There has to be to a host at least one
(06:34):
other right, Um. But then it can go. People have
reported up to a hundred or beyond UM, and they
can happen at the same time too. Yeah, that's another
thing is they can switch between them um pretty quickly.
And these periods where the altars emerge can take place
over the course of days or weeks. Basically, if you
(06:58):
if you if there's a period where the alls are
really kind of coming out and fluidly changing, that's a
period of severe stress that that person is undergoing. Yeah,
maybe calling back that previous drama. Maybe not, It might
just be triggered by stress period. And you said also
that some sometimes a lot of times the altars are
aware of each other. There's also been plenty of documented
(07:18):
cases where the altars don't like each other. Sometimes they
don't like the host um or they don't have much
respect for the host uh, or like one of the
other altars, they don't like how they deal with the host,
or deal with life, or something like that, which is
kind of neat because that that shows that these altars
(07:40):
are aware that that the effects or the actions of
the other altar or the host affects them. Yeah, like
if they are somehow they understand that they're part of
the whole. Well, you can be uh, the host person
that just the regular Josh is a non drinker and
(08:00):
you could have an alcoholic altar. Well, yeah, it thinks
the host is a square. And like, I can't wait
to get my hands on a drink because Josh is
like he's he won't go near the stuff. But now
that I'm randy, I'm gonna buy that twelve pack of
Maister Brow. Yeah, and very I don't think I've ever
had a sip of Maister Brow. I had a very
(08:21):
long night with it about fifteen years ago. Okay, so
you might have undergone something that's similar to UM dissociative disorder,
we should say. Also when they renamed associative disorder, they
also took all of these components that used to make
up multiple personality disorder and split them. So now there's
(08:43):
four associated disorders. UM. There is dissociative identity disorder, which
is the most extreme, that's the one with altars and
different personalities coming out. And then there is UM dissociative amnesia,
which is remember in our amnesia podcasts? Who brought this
one about um? Where you just kind of forget a
(09:08):
certain experience. Yeah, Like I had this terrible car crash.
I don't even remember it all right, and it was
dissociative amnesia. That that's that where it's like you don't
remember the terrible thing that happened to you. Um. There's
also a dissociative fugue, which is where you basically just
leave your life. You walk away from your life and
(09:29):
maybe you seem like you're kind of out of it
or whatever. Maybe you're under the influence of a different personality. Um,
it's it's not just like I'm not gonna come home
any longer. It's like you left your life and are
a different person. You're leading a different life in the
last days, weeks, months, um and then Chuck. The fourth
one is deep personalization disorder, which is like you're you're
(09:53):
watching your life as if you're viewing a movie. You're detached.
And I think that one. I think these can work
to other because I know that if you have d
I D, you definitely have moments of experiencing uh that one. Yeah,
they they like even if you're just the host, you
might feel like you're just watching yourself instead of being yourself.
So dissociative identity disorder diagnosis is almost has like split
(10:17):
personalities fluid. It switches between the different disorders and the
one thing that they all have in common is that
they all appear to be coping mechanisms to protect the
mind from a trauma. They're basically saying like I'm checking
out of my life, or I'm detaching myself from my life,
or I'm just not going to remember that part of
my life, or I am I can't handle my life
(10:41):
and this other personality can. Yeah, and it's not. It's
not always just those things that you know. Some of
the side symptoms are can be hallucinations. A lot of
times it leads to substance abuse or eating disorders, UM depression,
anxiety and mood swings obviously OBVI and UH, memory disturbances
(11:02):
either short or long term. Right, it's kind of one
of the keys. Probably UM and you apparently a person
suffering from the sociative identities sort of just kind of
like you said, foggy is a really good descriptor of
if not life, then their periods of UM this condition
flaring up. I guess. Yeah, just their sense of place
(11:25):
and time is just completely disrupted. It sounds awful, Yeah,
it is awful. Yeah, it is UM. Like I said,
I haven't seen the United States of Terror, but apparently
it's a lot of comic effect out of yeah, of course,
but if you have the sociative identity disorder, you'd likely
have a really hard struggle in life. Yeah, and it
shows some of that too. I mean it's obviously for TV,
(11:45):
so there is some comedy with some of the althars,
but it also shows the toll that it takes on
the family and stuff like that. So, uh, it's this
has been around for a little while. We've understood it
its symptoms since at least the late eighteenth century. Yeah,
and and some early scientists and researchers did a pretty
good job considering how long ago it was nailing it. Um. Well,
(12:09):
it's a pretty like extravagant yeah case. Yeah, people come. Sure, doctors,
especially in the eighteen hundreds and seventeen hundreds, were like
pretty excited about it, you know. Um, so demonic possession
and weird things like that. Back in the day, A
lot of many of those cases may have been things
(12:29):
like these disorders. Uh, we just didn't know about it
back then, so we just said someone was a hysteric
or a witch and they killed them or lock them up,
you know, in some room. Um. But the first symptoms
of d i D came around in nineteen and sev
it's a long time ago. Yeah, a guy named ever
Heart Gamelon No, yeah, Gamelon, Yeah, I think it's g
(12:54):
M E L I N. I would go silent g
on that melon. Why don't they just spell it right,
that's just a guess. Yeah. Well, he was the first
one to describe the conditions. He had a patient who
was a middle class German woman who had an altar
who was a French aristocrat. So he hypnotized her, brought
out the French aristocrat, the animal magnetized her or mesmerism. Yeah,
(13:19):
and we did an episode on hypnosis if you want
to go check that out. Yeah, it's a very good one. Um.
But up until the late eighteen hundreds, about eighteen eighty,
they generally thought that what the deal was was that
humans had a background consciousness and that was actually greater
than our regular primary consciousness, and when that background consciousness
(13:42):
got sick, then that's what brought out the cray right,
that that's what mental illness came from. Pretty much basically,
it was another way of putting the conscious in the subconscious,
because I mean, and it still today, people believe the
subconscious exists and that it's the one that's really running
the show, really is that's still the belief that it's
(14:02):
greater as far as I know, certainly among Freudians. But yeah,
that's true. I don't I don't think anyone's really discredited
the idea of the subconscious. All right, who knows. I'm
sure we're going to find up here. They're about the
same time as that was going on. Um, they started
to tie it with childhood trauma, which is pretty spot on.
(14:23):
And then a French patient named Louis Viev Viva viv.
He was twenty two years old and he had this
is in the late had six personalities. Doctors just went
crazy over this guy. Um. They didn't overlap with their memories.
They thought that they were just hypnotic variations of each other.
(14:45):
They didn't understand though, at the time, that they were
actually completely separate personalities. They thought it was just all
parts of Louis, which if you, if you really kind
of follow the timeline of UM D I D like
they were. We've come back to that understanding of it. Yeah,
(15:05):
I guess you're right. You know that it's not like
just different personalities, it's just different aspects of a single
personality that are are kind of given voice in a
very literal like different voice in a literal way, right,
you know, Yeah, that's a good point. And then after
that are actually around the same time, Pierre Janette, another
(15:27):
French researcher UM said, now these are different personalities and
it comes from a trauma that they suffered, right, So
he was kind of hit it early on. Yeah, he
I guess he laid the groundwork for the understanding for
the next century or so to come. UM. And then uh,
it wasn't until nineteen o five that somebody claimed to
(15:48):
cure a person with UM dissociative identity disorder again back
then known as multiple personality disorder UM, a guy named
Morton Prince Morty Prince not Martin Prince, Morton Prince UM.
He basically said that using hypnosis he was able to
UM coax out the very easily coax out the altars.
(16:12):
Because this is something like very early on, dissociative identity
disorder and hypnosis were basically just went hand in hand,
and UM alienists believed that they could use hypnosis to
very easily draw out the altars, which they could who
am I talking to now exactly? Or I want to
talk to you know, this personality and then start confronting
(16:34):
those personalities and convincing them to integrate into the host personality.
And then once you had full successful integration, you had
a reunited whole host person who was just one personality.
But the the the key is is that they're using hypnosis,
(16:54):
and hypnosis doesn't isn't real, right, So, like, we have
a huge clue here to a mystery of what exactly
is going on. But before anybody really kind of faces
that and confronts it um and starts to really truly
treat associative ideality disorder on its face or at its root,
(17:16):
it treated it on its face. Psychiatry took a really
like it just went all in and doubled down on
the most um, the sexiest, craziest versions that could come
up with. So, Chuck, psychiatry is about to say, multiple
(17:57):
multiple personality disorder is um exactly what it looks like.
Some of these people are beyond looney. This guy over
here as a hundred personalities and seven of them are dogs,
different dogs. Can you believe this? And uh, these these
cases are going to start to grow by leaps and
bounds and number and it all can be traced back
(18:19):
to a single book, which is based on a single
case history. Yeah, well, a couple of books. Yeah. But
to start, it was all about Eve, that's right, The
Three Faces of Eve. It was a book written in
n seven by two psychiatrists, and it was about a
woman whose real name was Chris Costner size More, who
(18:42):
may or may not be related to Kevin Costner. Neither
I nor anybody on the Internet appears to know for sure.
I looked, and nobody all there are questions. I can't
believe I didn't think to look that up. Yeah Costner, Sure,
there's like two of them, Kevin and who Chris? Okay, um,
so she, uh, Chris Costner size More went um by
(19:02):
the name of Eva White, or at least that's what
they called her in the book, although funnily I didn't
look up to see whether or not she's related to
Tom size More, just Kevin Costner. Yeah, did I say
Eva White? I meant Eve White? Yeah, I might said Eve.
Either way, it's Eve White. And she was referred because
she had headaches amnesia, and she worked with these two
(19:24):
psychiatrists and a couple of altars emerged and they wrote
a book. Well, they supposedly cured her and reintegrated them
back into one host person, but they wrote a book
really quickly that exploded on the scene, super popular, made
them a ton of money. There was a big blockbuster movie. Um,
(19:47):
it was just it took over, well not took over,
but it made a huge splash and just people's consciousness
about what this is like for the first time time.
It was everyone you know, like you said, it's kind
of super sexy and interesting and people were captivated by
this new disease. And this Eve woman who was really
(20:10):
three women and one right there was Eve Peggy and
I can't remember the other one, but um one was
like a good girl, uh, the other one was like
a bad girl or a tough girl. And then the
host was just kind of a combination of the two. Yeah,
and she's still alive, she still is well. She um
(20:35):
so that this doctor um was it Thigpen. Yeah, doctor
thigpen Um who was treating her Corbett Thigpen and a
colleague I believe his name is Henny Cleckly, seriously Cleckly
and Thigpen so Um Thigpen was the one who wrote
(20:56):
like really went off the deep end with the book
and then sold the ladies life rights without her approval
to Hollywood, and they made this story or this movie
and like you said, it was the Century Fox. Yeah
it was, and it was. It made a pretty big splash,
both the book and the movie. Um. And she came
out and wrote a book called I'm Eve and said, Dude,
(21:17):
this guy is a total fraud, Like, yes, I do
have multiple personalities, but they didn't cure me. No, Like
this guy kept insisting I was cured. It didn't work.
He uh, he shot me up with sodium pentethal and
like just used the power of suggestion. Um. And he's
just a huckster, basically he was after the story. Um,
(21:41):
but here I am left with my conditions still. Yeah.
And she had reportedly suffered, UM witnessed a bad accident
and witnessed to deaths as a child and that's where
hers was born. So UM that set the stage that
for popular consciousness to um kind of come to understand
multiple personality disorder, which again that's what it was called
(22:04):
at the time. UM. And I mean it was all
over the place, like people just people were just aware
of it, whereas they hadn't been before. UM. And it
was kind of like a one two punch. You had
all about Eve and the fifties, and then about fifteen
years later you had Sybil. And Sybil was the one
(22:25):
that blew this thing wide open. It just happened, I guess,
to arrive at a time when UM America was really
ready to um undergo or be party to psychological exploitation
like big time. Yeah. And in nine three is when
Sybil the book came out, UM written by oh uh,
(22:48):
let's see Flora Rita Schreiber about her treatment with psychiatrist
Cornelia Wilbur and about the treatment of the real name
was Shirley Mason, and they kept that a secret for
many years Sybil, Yeah, to protect her her identity. Um,
but eventually the name came out. Well, she died in
the nineties. Yeah, she died ninety eight breast cancer. But um,
(23:11):
she had sixteen personalities. And like I said, Sally Field
played her in the movie. It was a big hit.
I remember my mom reading the book. It was all
the rage in the seventies. Yeah, it was huge, huge,
And um, she was actually an artist, a painter, and
like taught painting too, I think. But they found a
(23:32):
hundred and three paintings in her basement after she died,
and she only signed the ones that she felt like
she the host had painted, like she wouldn't sign the
ones that an Altar had painted. So many of them
are unsigned. But it's when you look at it, it's
really like they're all different, like some are like realist,
some are abstract, some are impressionistic, really all over the map,
(23:54):
and it's just I don't know, kind of a testament
to like how real this can be? Is there a
website that hosts all of them? Uh? I don't know.
I think if you look just look up, you know,
hidden paintings of Sybil, you can probably buy them. And
that would be what s I B y L is
how they spelled that? No s y b I L Yeah,
(24:14):
um so sybils a smash hit. It's based on the wave,
the first wave that was brought about by all about
Eve and the public is um just fully aware of
multiple personality disorders like these two are like the cream
of the crop. There were tons of made for TV
movies and um Donna Hue episodes and all sorts of
(24:35):
just chatter about multiple personality disorder, and all of a sudden,
the cases go from about two hundred in the medical
literature to suddenly eight thousand after the movie Sybil comes
out and it seems like every psychiatrist has a patient
with multiple personality disorder. And because of all this the
(24:59):
since nationalism that went along with it, there are fortunately
a caudra of serious psychiatrists and psychologists who said, wait
a minute, what, like what what what's going on here?
Like movies aren't supposed to trigger outbreaks of disorders. Some
people explained it away by saying, well, there, these people
(25:19):
may have didn't suffering like this. They didn't have a
name to associate with. The movie gave him the name
so they could go to the doctor and speak to
it and be treated right. Um, that is one explanation.
The problem is the explanation that this was a real
phenomenon and not like some sort of um what do
they call, I guess outbreak of mass hysteria A little
(25:43):
bit um And this is a no way to diminish
anybody who's suffering mentally in any way, of course, But
I'm talking about the specific moment in history in the
seventies in the West where there was an outbreak of
multiple personality disorder cases. Um idea that it was a
real thing was definitely undermined by the Cibil case itself, which,
(26:07):
like contemporaneously some psychiatrists said, this isn't a peer reviewed
case history. We think this is basically all just made up. Well,
the lid was blown off, specifically by a single doctor
in Sybil's case. Dr Herbert Spiegel apparently treated um Sybil. Well,
it's not a real name, but we'll call her Sybil
(26:29):
while the uh Wilbur was out of town, and he
was like, you know what, this doesn't add up. He
said these case notes. Yeah, he said, it seems like
she's really highly suggestible. Uh. It seems like you gave
her sodian pentethal and she's addicted to that, and it
seems like you might have not necessarily on purpose coached
(26:51):
her into saying these things. Well, there's there was um
at least one instance where that fill in doctor who's
treating um uh Sybil, said that they were in a
session and Sybil said, um, which which personality you want
me to be? Uh? Which is not something you say
(27:11):
when you can't control your altars. Uh. And then secondly
there was in the case notes there was a reference
to a note or a statement by Sybil to her
doctor Dr Wilbur that said, I do not even have
a double. I am all of them. I've been lying
in my pretense of them. And Dr Wilbur noted that
(27:33):
she wrote this up to avoidance behavior, that Sybil was
trying to avoid having to confront reintegrating her her personalities,
and that's why she was saying that she was lying. UM.
So when all of this kind of came out and
was added up and combined with this outbreak of um
(27:53):
multiple personality disorder cases in the late seventies early eighties,
it was it was pretty damning. But then when it
became obvious that satanic ritual abuse, yeah, that moral panic
that happened was following right on the heels of this,
I think the scientific community stepped back and said, Okay,
(28:15):
America's is crazy, well and not in the mental health
problem kind of way, like just just crazy. Yeah. I
think I think a lot of that came about because
the it started to become a legal defense, uh, and
people started explaining way very bad behaviors on altars and
claiming in court like it wasn't me that killed my wife,
(28:38):
it was Tony man. It sounds like we're talking about
the Lifetime Movie network here. You know, this Lifetime Movie
network is all over these stories. Yeah, I bet you
there's quite a few of those movies out there. Right.
So all this is going on, it becomes very apparent
that this isn't a real thing. Um, And fortunately for
the people who actually do suffer from this disorder, psychiatry said,
(29:03):
all right, let's get rid of the multiple personality disorder moniker,
and we're gonna rename it dissociative identity disorder. We're gonna
completely remove it from what just happened because that was pitiful,
and um, we're gonna get down to basics. We're gonna
go back to the way of addressing this, of viewing
(29:24):
this that um, the doctor who described Louis Vivey came
up with all the way back in that it's just
variations of the host personality, not truly separate personalities, and
that if we treat the underlying cause or even just
the co morbid symptoms drug addiction, alcoholism, depression, the hallucinations,
(29:49):
the mood swings, anxiety, if we treat all this, most
likely the depression identity disorders also going to be treated
in kind Yeah. I think another thing that lended itself
to that too, where doctor started being sued in the
nineties by people saying, wait a minute, you've got me
on these drugs, you're hypnotizing me. You're saying, you're calling
(30:10):
coercing me into calling out these altars, and so I'm
gonna sue you. Yeah, I'm glad you said that, because
it is worth revisiting. I don't think we really laid
this at the feet of psychiatrists enough. There were people
who saw this movie who were feeling this way, who
maybe felt like they they had more than one personality
(30:30):
and went to and I think everyone feels that way
a little bit sometimes, you know. But if you're a
highly suggestible person and you see this movie and you
start thinking like, wow, maybe that's what I have, and
they inject you with sodian pentethal right, you go to
a medical professional. That medical professional isn't supposed to be like, yeah, yeah,
you have that. And and this one's named Tim. Tim
(30:50):
is very aggressive personality. I can see Tim coming out now.
And then all of a sudden, the person's like Tim,
Like yes, that person's life has been altered, probably for
the negative, because of a UM, at the very least,
a dubious medical expert um. And yes, so of course
(31:11):
they were sued, and they should have been sued. It
was a really dark spot in the history of psychiatry,
which has a lot of dark spots on its history. Frankly,
you know this was this was one of them. But
like I said, again, um, there were a group of
psychiatrists who said, no, this is there's something real here.
We've just been looking at it the wrong way. We
(31:32):
allowed it to become sensationalized. We need to learn that lesson.
But at the same time, we need to identify the
people who really are suffering from this and figure out
how to help them. Okay, Chuck. So now we're at
(32:04):
they've renamed multiple personality disorder and now it's UM dissociative
identity disorder. So let's talk about how it's treated, how
it manifests, what it is. So the I guess the
modern understanding from what I can tell, seems to be that, UM,
the associative identity disorder is a person who has well,
(32:26):
let's talk about personality. What identity is? Okay, okay, what
if your identity is basically the a script that you've
been equipped with, that's been developed and refined in nuance,
but also very much brutalized and solidified over the years,
so that when you are faced with any any anything
(32:51):
in life, you're going to react in a prescribe predictable way.
That's your identity. Now, what if your identity is such that, um,
it doesn't handle stress very well, but you're still confronted
with stress. But that doesn't but handling stress isn't part
of that script that makes up your identity. Well, in
(33:13):
the case of a very very extreme case, it's possible
that a person will subsume their normal personality and draw
out some aspect that isn't predictable, that isn't prescribed, but
it is still part of themselves and put that front
and center to deal with that stress. And it might
cuss out the person like a psychiatrist who's confronting them
(33:36):
with the stress. It may be very protective of that personality,
but the point is it's still part of that single person.
It's just a different aspect showing when you take it
to its extreme conclusion, what you're looking at then are
two different personalities, split personalities, or multiple personalities. That's apparently
(34:00):
what dissociative identity disorder is So are you saying you
don't believe that when someone comes out in a British
accent and says my name is Rob, Like, that's not real.
I don't think the word real is a good word
because I think that that person it's real, and that's
reality right there, you know. I mean, like, if if
(34:21):
a person is experiencing a different personality and it happens
to be a British guy named Rob, that's the reality
right then. I don't think these people who have dissociative
identity disorder are faking. I don't think it's made up.
I don't think they're necessarily playing along. I think that's
what happened in the eighties. Everybody was just kind of
playing along. But I think if you actually have dissociative
(34:43):
identity disorder, like this is your experience, this is reality
to you, Like you do feel detached from your life,
you do have missing time, like you do experience this,
So yes, it's real for you. It's more how the
psychiatric community or the mental health community has to view
(35:03):
dissociative identity disorder in order to treat it. That it
isn't that they aren't separate personalities because you can basically, Um,
that's tantamount to saying you're possessed by a demon that's
a whole other person in there with you. And that's
just not the case. And if you view it like that,
you're not going to be able to treat it. Did
you find anyone famous with it? No? Did you herschel Walker? No? Really? Yeah,
(35:25):
you knew about that, right, Uh? No, famous former Georgia
Bulldog running back an NFL star, herschel Walker. He suffers
from d I D and he wrote a book called
Breaking Free. And he has no memory of winning the
Heisman Trophy. Oh no, he has no memory of putting
a gun to his wife's head something that's happened in
(35:46):
his life. Uh, no memory of any of these things.
And he says he has as many as twelve altars,
and um, his his wife, I don't know if they're
still together, I don't think. But his wife many years
thinks like it all makes sense now, Like when she
finally he came out with this, and he just came
out with a few years ago, she was like, well,
(36:08):
this totally makes sense because I saw very different people
through the course of our marriage. Out of nowhere. That
made no sense and she was like it was not
a mood swing and um he uh. He's famous for
not just being a football player, Like he was into ballet,
he went to FBI school, he was an Olympic bobsltter.
(36:32):
What he's he's done all these things he was. He's
a mixed martial artist now and he thinks that these
altars are you know, basically why he has so many
like varying interest in life. Yeah, that is really fascinating.
So what do you think about it? What's your take
on dissociated by Danny disorder? Well, I'm not sure i'd
(36:53):
see the difference between Like that's what a disorder mental
disorder is, is some believing something about themselves. Like I
guess I don't see the difference between someone thinking they
have these different personalities. Like a personality isn't a tangible
thing anyway, Like you can't touch it. So if someone
(37:15):
believes they have four different personalities, then they may as
well have four different personalities. Like I get you what
you're saying. I guess it's all part of that person.
But if it's a disorder, that means it's causing a problem, right,
I think the fact that when I see cases of
(37:36):
what looks like real d I d like herschel Walker,
no memory of of certain things like it's it's certainly
more powerful than you know. That's bad Chuck coming out
because I don't deal with stress. Well, we'll call him Tony,
you know. But if I blacked out and didn't remember
my actions for several days, and those actions included putting
(37:57):
a gun to my wife's head, then that's a whole
different thing. Yeah, you know, because I'm certainly moody. We
all know bad Chuck. We all know Tony Tony nice.
All right, Well, I guess that's it about dissociative identity disorder.
If you want to learn more about it, type those
words in the search part how stuff works dot Com
and they'll bring up this article. And since I said
(38:17):
search parts, time for listener mail. Uh, I'm gonna call
this real world advice for Tony. This is guy's name
is Tony? Oh no, yeah, total accident. Hey, guys, I
recently returned from to the States from living in the
Republic of Korea, mostly teaching English there for the last
(38:37):
four years. Returned home to get a job different from that,
and now that I'm at home, I can't figure out
what to do. Uh. To give you context, I've been
actively interviewing with all sorts of companies, organizations and firms
positions and marketing, sales, business development, finance, consulting. Anyway, I
find most of those roles to be too boring. I
(38:59):
also feel pressured and burden because I studied engineering at
Columbia University and feel a burden to be successful quote unquote,
I am very much stuck in a rut looking for
a job, uh, not excited by my prospects, and asking
what do I want to do. I don't really want
to go back to school because I can't afford to
pay for a master's degree, especially if I'm not certain
(39:21):
or pretty certain that that advanced degree will improve my situation.
So I'm emailing you guys because I'm an advoliser and
I think we share similar perspectives on things, and you
have great careers that are thrilling and aspirable. So I'm
not quite saying I want to be you guys, or
I want your jobs, but I see both these people
that are really interesting salt of the earth folk who
(39:43):
can relate to my situation more so, than my investment management, consulting, law, youring,
med school friends. So Tony h. De Frieda's wants to
know what he should do. Man, that's a tough one.
I've actually been thinking about this too email for a
couple of days now. Yeah yeah, okay, I mean like
he's asking for help, sure, so give it to him. Well,
(40:07):
my first bit of advice would be to narrow down
your scope a little bit. If you studied engineering and
you're looking at marketing, sales, business development, finance, consulting, I
think you're casting your net a little too wide. Yeah,
So my first bit of advice is to narrow that down.
And my second bit of advice is to narrow it
down based on often tell people like what do you what,
(40:29):
what do you love? And what would you love to do?
Ideally what they call blue sky territory here in the
corporate world. It sounds like also to me, you're asking
a lot of people, but you're spending a lot of
time like just keeping it at the forty foot level.
Like maybe you sit for a little while with a
legal pen a pen and like be quiet and gather
(40:51):
your thoughts and then brainstorm after that, just even for
like a half hour twenty minutes something like that. If
for your future that you're thinking about, you could probably
come up with a half hour to dedicate just to that.
But just turn everything off and like really focus inward
and say what do you want to do, and then
go for that, And don't feel obligated to use your degree.
(41:13):
Most people can go to college, don't use the degree
that they got. It's more like they went through college
to show they can go through college, you know. Yeah,
and he didn't list engineer anywhere and what he was
looking into, even though that's what his degrees in. Yeah.
Here's the other thing too, there are very few um
career choices or life paths that go that go absolutely nowhere.
(41:39):
And you shouldn't be afraid to take steps that you
that aren't necessarily the prescribed way to go. Yeah, and
don't be worried about locking yourself in for life necessarily,
you know, like try something out that you love and
it may bear fruit. Yeah, and if it doesn't work,
you can always just go get like a guaranteed job
(42:00):
or something afterward. Yeah. Yeah, And something that interests you
now isn't necessarily going to interest you five years from now.
So yeah, I think you're worrying too much, Tony, or
Tony if this was a very sly way of trying
to get the word out with your resume, and you're
out there and you want to Columbia University grad engineering degree,
(42:23):
who's interested in sales and business development and finance? Let
us know, interested in anything? See captain ing whatever? Uh So,
spend some time, be quiet with your thoughts, trying to
decide what you love and if you could make a
career out of that. And uh, if we hear anything,
then we'll let you know. It sounds like you're up
for adventure because you lived in Korea. We have them
(42:44):
for garden seed. Yeah. We give him a lot of
advice here. Yeah, this is plenty. Take some of that
and do something with it, Tony. Let us know how
it goes. Please. Uh. If you have made any kind
of life choice or decision based on something Chuck and
I had said, we want to know how that went.
You can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast.
You can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff
you should know. You can send us an email to
(43:06):
Stuff Podcast at how Stuff Works dot com, and as always,
hang out with us at our home on the Web
Stuff you Should Know dot com Stuff you Should Know
is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For
more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hi, there everybody. It's me Josh and for this week's
s Y s K Selects, I've chosen our episode on
dissociative identity disorder formerly known as multiple personality disorder. It's
one of those very satisfying episodes where we get to
go behind and undo all of the incorrect things. Everybody
assumes that they know about it, um, which is fun
(00:21):
for us, and I hope it's fun for you to
listen and learn. So away with the show. Welcome to Stuff.
You should know, a production of My Heart Radios How
Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
(00:42):
There's Charles W. Choke Bryant, and there's no is no
one of my altars. No these his own. Dude, Okay,
do you have walters? Okay? Do you no? Not that
I know. I think we've each seen a bit of
an altar in each other. But that's just called us
being jerks every now and then. Bad mood. Yeah, that's
(01:05):
a little different. I was on a forum about a
forum for people with dissociative identity disorder and like the
from what I was reading, you sometimes you feel crowded. Um.
Some people have like felt like they have had altars
like their whole life, as long as they've been around interesting, Um,
(01:26):
sometimes they don't. Like. One of the entries I saw
was like, does your altar have to have a name,
And it was like, I don't necessarily think of them
as people, and another person responded and so that that's
often like an early stage of the process, and then
over time, as they become more pronounced, they end up
adopting names. Or it is uh, super moody or some
(01:51):
other bad behavior that you say is disassociative identity disorder
and you give it a name, Well you don't, your
therapist does yeah, or you might yeah. So it's controversial
and we'll get to that, but um, I guess we
should start off by saying that another name for this
a more popular name, even though it's been uh since
(02:15):
d I D. The original name was multiple personality to
disorder the personality. When I was reading this at first,
I was like, this sounds an awful lot like split personality.
It is. It is. They just renamed it and we'll
see pretty soon why, which is kind of a good
move because from what I can tell, it seems to
(02:35):
be a real thing that underwent a period of intense
exploitation and abuse, so much so that now there's a
lot of people who doubt that it's a real thing, right,
but that there are still people out there who do
suffer from it enough so that psychiatry has said, we
(02:56):
need to change the name and then we just focus
on the people that really have this. Now. Did they
change it because it had a stigma? Really? That was
the only reason? Yeah? Wow, Yeah, there's this excellent article
um on I O nine actually about UM. I think
it's called like the myth of dissociative identity disorder and um,
(03:17):
the myth of multiple personality disorder. Thank you they went
old school, yeah, um, and the lady who wrote it
did a really good job of explaining the controversy around
it and also like the renewal of it as well,
like how it became renewed. But yeah, it was because
it was basically, um exploited and fictionalized by the psychiatric
(03:39):
community a few notable people that we'll get to all
that though. Yeah, so, I mean everybody has heard of
multiple personality disorder thanks to that that period of exploitation
from the fifties to the eighties. Um, so you have
probably a pretty good idea of the concept behind it
of the disorder. To begin with, it's a single person
(04:01):
has their normal, their original UM what's called their host personality,
and sometimes especially under periods of acute psycho social stress,
maybe confronted with stress or something they don't want to
think about or talk about or whatever, another one of
(04:22):
their personalities will emerge and they're generally tied to a
trauma and early life that you may not even know
about until you have therapy that out of your subconscious
right and UM they believe that for dissociative identity disorder,
when it does come about from the result of a trauma,
(04:44):
it comes about as a coping mechanism to protect the
mind because the the host personality simply can't handle dealing
with it. But there is some aspect of that person
which is characterized through another personality that can handle it,
(05:04):
and so that personality will come out to handle those
periods where UM the the person is confronted with those memories. Yeah,
and it can express itself in different ways depending on
UM how severe your disorder is. But generally, if you've
ever seen United States of terra UM, you ever seen
(05:25):
that No, I know of it, but I've never seen
an episode. Emily was way into it. Um, we're talking
about completely new people. But your behavior, your speech, you
can be a different sex, you can have a different accent, um,
different species. Yeah, you could be like a dog technically. UM.
I think that's a little more rare. I would imagine. Yeah. Um.
(05:48):
And there is no timetable. That's um. It doesn't necessarily
happen like right after a trauma. Can come out years later. Um.
And it just there's not an awareness necessarily. Uh, that's
a big one. Well, there's not an awareness of the
host person doesn't have an awareness of the altars coming out.
Sometimes they do sometimes, but the altars usually are aware
(06:11):
of the other altars and the host. And that was
like it was in the United States of Tara. Yeah,
sometimes the um the altars, which I don't know if
we specifically said or not yet, but an altar is
one of these non one of the other personalities within
the host personality, and there's there's usually at least two others.
There has to be to a host at least one
(06:34):
other right, Um. But then it can go. People have
reported up to a hundred or beyond UM, and they
can happen at the same time too. Yeah, that's another
thing is they can switch between them um pretty quickly.
And these periods where the altars emerge can take place
over the course of days or weeks. Basically, if you
(06:58):
if you if there's a period where the alls are
really kind of coming out and fluidly changing, that's a
period of severe stress that that person is undergoing. Yeah,
maybe calling back that previous drama. Maybe not, It might
just be triggered by stress period. And you said also
that some sometimes a lot of times the altars are
aware of each other. There's also been plenty of documented
(07:18):
cases where the altars don't like each other. Sometimes they
don't like the host um or they don't have much
respect for the host uh, or like one of the
other altars, they don't like how they deal with the host,
or deal with life, or something like that, which is
kind of neat because that that shows that these altars
(07:40):
are aware that that the effects or the actions of
the other altar or the host affects them. Yeah, like
if they are somehow they understand that they're part of
the whole. Well, you can be uh, the host person
that just the regular Josh is a non drinker and
(08:00):
you could have an alcoholic altar. Well, yeah, it thinks
the host is a square. And like, I can't wait
to get my hands on a drink because Josh is
like he's he won't go near the stuff. But now
that I'm randy, I'm gonna buy that twelve pack of
Maister Brow. Yeah, and very I don't think I've ever
had a sip of Maister Brow. I had a very
(08:21):
long night with it about fifteen years ago. Okay, so
you might have undergone something that's similar to UM dissociative disorder,
we should say. Also when they renamed associative disorder, they
also took all of these components that used to make
up multiple personality disorder and split them. So now there's
(08:43):
four associated disorders. UM. There is dissociative identity disorder, which
is the most extreme, that's the one with altars and
different personalities coming out. And then there is UM dissociative amnesia,
which is remember in our amnesia podcasts? Who brought this
one about um? Where you just kind of forget a
(09:08):
certain experience. Yeah, Like I had this terrible car crash.
I don't even remember it all right, and it was
dissociative amnesia. That that's that where it's like you don't
remember the terrible thing that happened to you. Um. There's
also a dissociative fugue, which is where you basically just
leave your life. You walk away from your life and
(09:29):
maybe you seem like you're kind of out of it
or whatever. Maybe you're under the influence of a different personality. Um,
it's it's not just like I'm not gonna come home
any longer. It's like you left your life and are
a different person. You're leading a different life in the
last days, weeks, months, um and then Chuck. The fourth
one is deep personalization disorder, which is like you're you're
(09:53):
watching your life as if you're viewing a movie. You're detached.
And I think that one. I think these can work
to other because I know that if you have d
I D, you definitely have moments of experiencing uh that one. Yeah,
they they like even if you're just the host, you
might feel like you're just watching yourself instead of being yourself.
So dissociative identity disorder diagnosis is almost has like split
(10:17):
personalities fluid. It switches between the different disorders and the
one thing that they all have in common is that
they all appear to be coping mechanisms to protect the
mind from a trauma. They're basically saying like I'm checking
out of my life, or I'm detaching myself from my life,
or I'm just not going to remember that part of
my life, or I am I can't handle my life
(10:41):
and this other personality can. Yeah, and it's not. It's
not always just those things that you know. Some of
the side symptoms are can be hallucinations. A lot of
times it leads to substance abuse or eating disorders, UM depression,
anxiety and mood swings obviously OBVI and UH, memory disturbances
(11:02):
either short or long term. Right, it's kind of one
of the keys. Probably UM and you apparently a person
suffering from the sociative identities sort of just kind of
like you said, foggy is a really good descriptor of
if not life, then their periods of UM this condition
flaring up. I guess. Yeah, just their sense of place
(11:25):
and time is just completely disrupted. It sounds awful, Yeah,
it is awful. Yeah, it is UM. Like I said,
I haven't seen the United States of Terror, but apparently
it's a lot of comic effect out of yeah, of course,
but if you have the sociative identity disorder, you'd likely
have a really hard struggle in life. Yeah, and it
shows some of that too. I mean it's obviously for TV,
(11:45):
so there is some comedy with some of the althars,
but it also shows the toll that it takes on
the family and stuff like that. So, uh, it's this
has been around for a little while. We've understood it
its symptoms since at least the late eighteenth century. Yeah,
and and some early scientists and researchers did a pretty
good job considering how long ago it was nailing it. Um. Well,
(12:09):
it's a pretty like extravagant yeah case. Yeah, people come. Sure, doctors,
especially in the eighteen hundreds and seventeen hundreds, were like
pretty excited about it, you know. Um, so demonic possession
and weird things like that. Back in the day, A
lot of many of those cases may have been things
(12:29):
like these disorders. Uh, we just didn't know about it
back then, so we just said someone was a hysteric
or a witch and they killed them or lock them up,
you know, in some room. Um. But the first symptoms
of d i D came around in nineteen and sev
it's a long time ago. Yeah, a guy named ever
Heart Gamelon No, yeah, Gamelon, Yeah, I think it's g
(12:54):
M E L I N. I would go silent g
on that melon. Why don't they just spell it right,
that's just a guess. Yeah. Well, he was the first
one to describe the conditions. He had a patient who
was a middle class German woman who had an altar
who was a French aristocrat. So he hypnotized her, brought
out the French aristocrat, the animal magnetized her or mesmerism. Yeah,
(13:19):
and we did an episode on hypnosis if you want
to go check that out. Yeah, it's a very good one. Um.
But up until the late eighteen hundreds, about eighteen eighty,
they generally thought that what the deal was was that
humans had a background consciousness and that was actually greater
than our regular primary consciousness, and when that background consciousness
(13:42):
got sick, then that's what brought out the cray right,
that that's what mental illness came from. Pretty much basically,
it was another way of putting the conscious in the subconscious,
because I mean, and it still today, people believe the
subconscious exists and that it's the one that's really running
the show, really is that's still the belief that it's
(14:02):
greater as far as I know, certainly among Freudians. But yeah,
that's true. I don't I don't think anyone's really discredited
the idea of the subconscious. All right, who knows. I'm
sure we're going to find up here. They're about the
same time as that was going on. Um, they started
to tie it with childhood trauma, which is pretty spot on.
(14:23):
And then a French patient named Louis Viev Viva viv.
He was twenty two years old and he had this
is in the late had six personalities. Doctors just went
crazy over this guy. Um. They didn't overlap with their memories.
They thought that they were just hypnotic variations of each other.
(14:45):
They didn't understand though, at the time, that they were
actually completely separate personalities. They thought it was just all
parts of Louis, which if you, if you really kind
of follow the timeline of UM D I D like
they were. We've come back to that understanding of it. Yeah,
(15:05):
I guess you're right. You know that it's not like
just different personalities, it's just different aspects of a single
personality that are are kind of given voice in a
very literal like different voice in a literal way, right,
you know, Yeah, that's a good point. And then after
that are actually around the same time, Pierre Janette, another
(15:27):
French researcher UM said, now these are different personalities and
it comes from a trauma that they suffered, right, So
he was kind of hit it early on. Yeah, he
I guess he laid the groundwork for the understanding for
the next century or so to come. UM. And then uh,
it wasn't until nineteen o five that somebody claimed to
(15:48):
cure a person with UM dissociative identity disorder again back
then known as multiple personality disorder UM, a guy named
Morton Prince Morty Prince not Martin Prince, Morton Prince UM.
He basically said that using hypnosis he was able to
UM coax out the very easily coax out the altars.
(16:12):
Because this is something like very early on, dissociative identity
disorder and hypnosis were basically just went hand in hand,
and UM alienists believed that they could use hypnosis to
very easily draw out the altars, which they could who
am I talking to now exactly? Or I want to
talk to you know, this personality and then start confronting
(16:34):
those personalities and convincing them to integrate into the host personality.
And then once you had full successful integration, you had
a reunited whole host person who was just one personality.
But the the the key is is that they're using hypnosis,
(16:54):
and hypnosis doesn't isn't real, right, So, like, we have
a huge clue here to a mystery of what exactly
is going on. But before anybody really kind of faces
that and confronts it um and starts to really truly
treat associative ideality disorder on its face or at its root,
(17:16):
it treated it on its face. Psychiatry took a really
like it just went all in and doubled down on
the most um, the sexiest, craziest versions that could come
up with. So, Chuck, psychiatry is about to say, multiple
(17:57):
multiple personality disorder is um exactly what it looks like.
Some of these people are beyond looney. This guy over
here as a hundred personalities and seven of them are dogs,
different dogs. Can you believe this? And uh, these these
cases are going to start to grow by leaps and
bounds and number and it all can be traced back
(18:19):
to a single book, which is based on a single
case history. Yeah, well, a couple of books. Yeah. But
to start, it was all about Eve, that's right, The
Three Faces of Eve. It was a book written in
n seven by two psychiatrists, and it was about a
woman whose real name was Chris Costner size More, who
(18:42):
may or may not be related to Kevin Costner. Neither
I nor anybody on the Internet appears to know for sure.
I looked, and nobody all there are questions. I can't
believe I didn't think to look that up. Yeah Costner, Sure,
there's like two of them, Kevin and who Chris? Okay, um,
so she, uh, Chris Costner size More went um by
(19:02):
the name of Eva White, or at least that's what
they called her in the book, although funnily I didn't
look up to see whether or not she's related to
Tom size More, just Kevin Costner. Yeah, did I say
Eva White? I meant Eve White? Yeah, I might said Eve.
Either way, it's Eve White. And she was referred because
she had headaches amnesia, and she worked with these two
(19:24):
psychiatrists and a couple of altars emerged and they wrote
a book. Well, they supposedly cured her and reintegrated them
back into one host person, but they wrote a book
really quickly that exploded on the scene, super popular, made
them a ton of money. There was a big blockbuster movie. Um,
(19:47):
it was just it took over, well not took over,
but it made a huge splash and just people's consciousness
about what this is like for the first time time.
It was everyone you know, like you said, it's kind
of super sexy and interesting and people were captivated by
this new disease. And this Eve woman who was really
(20:10):
three women and one right there was Eve Peggy and
I can't remember the other one, but um one was
like a good girl, uh, the other one was like
a bad girl or a tough girl. And then the
host was just kind of a combination of the two. Yeah,
and she's still alive, she still is well. She um
(20:35):
so that this doctor um was it Thigpen. Yeah, doctor
thigpen Um who was treating her Corbett Thigpen and a
colleague I believe his name is Henny Cleckly, seriously Cleckly
and Thigpen so Um Thigpen was the one who wrote
(20:56):
like really went off the deep end with the book
and then sold the ladies life rights without her approval
to Hollywood, and they made this story or this movie
and like you said, it was the Century Fox. Yeah
it was, and it was. It made a pretty big splash,
both the book and the movie. Um. And she came
out and wrote a book called I'm Eve and said, Dude,
(21:17):
this guy is a total fraud, Like, yes, I do
have multiple personalities, but they didn't cure me. No, Like
this guy kept insisting I was cured. It didn't work.
He uh, he shot me up with sodium pentethal and
like just used the power of suggestion. Um. And he's
just a huckster, basically he was after the story. Um,
(21:41):
but here I am left with my conditions still. Yeah.
And she had reportedly suffered, UM witnessed a bad accident
and witnessed to deaths as a child and that's where
hers was born. So UM that set the stage that
for popular consciousness to um kind of come to understand
multiple personality disorder, which again that's what it was called
(22:04):
at the time. UM. And I mean it was all
over the place, like people just people were just aware
of it, whereas they hadn't been before. UM. And it
was kind of like a one two punch. You had
all about Eve and the fifties, and then about fifteen
years later you had Sybil. And Sybil was the one
(22:25):
that blew this thing wide open. It just happened, I guess,
to arrive at a time when UM America was really
ready to um undergo or be party to psychological exploitation
like big time. Yeah. And in nine three is when
Sybil the book came out, UM written by oh uh,
(22:48):
let's see Flora Rita Schreiber about her treatment with psychiatrist
Cornelia Wilbur and about the treatment of the real name
was Shirley Mason, and they kept that a secret for
many years Sybil, Yeah, to protect her her identity. Um,
but eventually the name came out. Well, she died in
the nineties. Yeah, she died ninety eight breast cancer. But um,
(23:11):
she had sixteen personalities. And like I said, Sally Field
played her in the movie. It was a big hit.
I remember my mom reading the book. It was all
the rage in the seventies. Yeah, it was huge, huge,
And um, she was actually an artist, a painter, and
like taught painting too, I think. But they found a
(23:32):
hundred and three paintings in her basement after she died,
and she only signed the ones that she felt like
she the host had painted, like she wouldn't sign the
ones that an Altar had painted. So many of them
are unsigned. But it's when you look at it, it's
really like they're all different, like some are like realist,
some are abstract, some are impressionistic, really all over the map,
(23:54):
and it's just I don't know, kind of a testament
to like how real this can be? Is there a
website that hosts all of them? Uh? I don't know.
I think if you look just look up, you know,
hidden paintings of Sybil, you can probably buy them. And
that would be what s I B y L is
how they spelled that? No s y b I L Yeah,
(24:14):
um so sybils a smash hit. It's based on the wave,
the first wave that was brought about by all about
Eve and the public is um just fully aware of
multiple personality disorders like these two are like the cream
of the crop. There were tons of made for TV
movies and um Donna Hue episodes and all sorts of
(24:35):
just chatter about multiple personality disorder, and all of a sudden,
the cases go from about two hundred in the medical
literature to suddenly eight thousand after the movie Sybil comes
out and it seems like every psychiatrist has a patient
with multiple personality disorder. And because of all this the
(24:59):
since nationalism that went along with it, there are fortunately
a caudra of serious psychiatrists and psychologists who said, wait
a minute, what, like what what what's going on here?
Like movies aren't supposed to trigger outbreaks of disorders. Some
people explained it away by saying, well, there, these people
(25:19):
may have didn't suffering like this. They didn't have a
name to associate with. The movie gave him the name
so they could go to the doctor and speak to
it and be treated right. Um, that is one explanation.
The problem is the explanation that this was a real
phenomenon and not like some sort of um what do
they call, I guess outbreak of mass hysteria A little
(25:43):
bit um And this is a no way to diminish
anybody who's suffering mentally in any way, of course, But
I'm talking about the specific moment in history in the
seventies in the West where there was an outbreak of
multiple personality disorder cases. Um idea that it was a
real thing was definitely undermined by the Cibil case itself, which,
(26:07):
like contemporaneously some psychiatrists said, this isn't a peer reviewed
case history. We think this is basically all just made up. Well,
the lid was blown off, specifically by a single doctor
in Sybil's case. Dr Herbert Spiegel apparently treated um Sybil. Well,
it's not a real name, but we'll call her Sybil
(26:29):
while the uh Wilbur was out of town, and he
was like, you know what, this doesn't add up. He
said these case notes. Yeah, he said, it seems like
she's really highly suggestible. Uh. It seems like you gave
her sodian pentethal and she's addicted to that, and it
seems like you might have not necessarily on purpose coached
(26:51):
her into saying these things. Well, there's there was um
at least one instance where that fill in doctor who's
treating um uh Sybil, said that they were in a
session and Sybil said, um, which which personality you want
me to be? Uh? Which is not something you say
(27:11):
when you can't control your altars. Uh. And then secondly
there was in the case notes there was a reference
to a note or a statement by Sybil to her
doctor Dr Wilbur that said, I do not even have
a double. I am all of them. I've been lying
in my pretense of them. And Dr Wilbur noted that
(27:33):
she wrote this up to avoidance behavior, that Sybil was
trying to avoid having to confront reintegrating her her personalities,
and that's why she was saying that she was lying. UM.
So when all of this kind of came out and
was added up and combined with this outbreak of um
(27:53):
multiple personality disorder cases in the late seventies early eighties,
it was it was pretty damning. But then when it
became obvious that satanic ritual abuse, yeah, that moral panic
that happened was following right on the heels of this,
I think the scientific community stepped back and said, Okay,
(28:15):
America's is crazy, well and not in the mental health
problem kind of way, like just just crazy. Yeah. I
think I think a lot of that came about because
the it started to become a legal defense, uh, and
people started explaining way very bad behaviors on altars and
claiming in court like it wasn't me that killed my wife,
(28:38):
it was Tony man. It sounds like we're talking about
the Lifetime Movie network here. You know, this Lifetime Movie
network is all over these stories. Yeah, I bet you
there's quite a few of those movies out there. Right.
So all this is going on, it becomes very apparent
that this isn't a real thing. Um, And fortunately for
the people who actually do suffer from this disorder, psychiatry said,
(29:03):
all right, let's get rid of the multiple personality disorder moniker,
and we're gonna rename it dissociative identity disorder. We're gonna
completely remove it from what just happened because that was pitiful,
and um, we're gonna get down to basics. We're gonna
go back to the way of addressing this, of viewing
(29:24):
this that um, the doctor who described Louis Vivey came
up with all the way back in that it's just
variations of the host personality, not truly separate personalities, and
that if we treat the underlying cause or even just
the co morbid symptoms drug addiction, alcoholism, depression, the hallucinations,
(29:49):
the mood swings, anxiety, if we treat all this, most
likely the depression identity disorders also going to be treated
in kind Yeah. I think another thing that lended itself
to that too, where doctor started being sued in the
nineties by people saying, wait a minute, you've got me
on these drugs, you're hypnotizing me. You're saying, you're calling
(30:10):
coercing me into calling out these altars, and so I'm
gonna sue you. Yeah, I'm glad you said that, because
it is worth revisiting. I don't think we really laid
this at the feet of psychiatrists enough. There were people
who saw this movie who were feeling this way, who
maybe felt like they they had more than one personality
(30:30):
and went to and I think everyone feels that way
a little bit sometimes, you know. But if you're a
highly suggestible person and you see this movie and you
start thinking like, wow, maybe that's what I have, and
they inject you with sodian pentethal right, you go to
a medical professional. That medical professional isn't supposed to be like, yeah, yeah,
you have that. And and this one's named Tim. Tim
(30:50):
is very aggressive personality. I can see Tim coming out now.
And then all of a sudden, the person's like Tim,
Like yes, that person's life has been altered, probably for
the negative, because of a UM, at the very least,
a dubious medical expert um. And yes, so of course
(31:11):
they were sued, and they should have been sued. It
was a really dark spot in the history of psychiatry,
which has a lot of dark spots on its history. Frankly,
you know this was this was one of them. But
like I said, again, um, there were a group of
psychiatrists who said, no, this is there's something real here.
We've just been looking at it the wrong way. We
(31:32):
allowed it to become sensationalized. We need to learn that lesson.
But at the same time, we need to identify the
people who really are suffering from this and figure out
how to help them. Okay, Chuck. So now we're at
(32:04):
they've renamed multiple personality disorder and now it's UM dissociative
identity disorder. So let's talk about how it's treated, how
it manifests, what it is. So the I guess the
modern understanding from what I can tell, seems to be that, UM,
the associative identity disorder is a person who has well,
(32:26):
let's talk about personality. What identity is? Okay, okay, what
if your identity is basically the a script that you've
been equipped with, that's been developed and refined in nuance,
but also very much brutalized and solidified over the years,
so that when you are faced with any any anything
(32:51):
in life, you're going to react in a prescribe predictable way.
That's your identity. Now, what if your identity is such that, um,
it doesn't handle stress very well, but you're still confronted
with stress. But that doesn't but handling stress isn't part
of that script that makes up your identity. Well, in
(33:13):
the case of a very very extreme case, it's possible
that a person will subsume their normal personality and draw
out some aspect that isn't predictable, that isn't prescribed, but
it is still part of themselves and put that front
and center to deal with that stress. And it might
cuss out the person like a psychiatrist who's confronting them
(33:36):
with the stress. It may be very protective of that personality,
but the point is it's still part of that single person.
It's just a different aspect showing when you take it
to its extreme conclusion, what you're looking at then are
two different personalities, split personalities, or multiple personalities. That's apparently
(34:00):
what dissociative identity disorder is So are you saying you
don't believe that when someone comes out in a British
accent and says my name is Rob, Like, that's not real.
I don't think the word real is a good word
because I think that that person it's real, and that's
reality right there, you know. I mean, like, if if
(34:21):
a person is experiencing a different personality and it happens
to be a British guy named Rob, that's the reality
right then. I don't think these people who have dissociative
identity disorder are faking. I don't think it's made up.
I don't think they're necessarily playing along. I think that's
what happened in the eighties. Everybody was just kind of
playing along. But I think if you actually have dissociative
(34:43):
identity disorder, like this is your experience, this is reality
to you, Like you do feel detached from your life,
you do have missing time, like you do experience this,
So yes, it's real for you. It's more how the
psychiatric community or the mental health community has to view
(35:03):
dissociative identity disorder in order to treat it. That it
isn't that they aren't separate personalities because you can basically, Um,
that's tantamount to saying you're possessed by a demon that's
a whole other person in there with you. And that's
just not the case. And if you view it like that,
you're not going to be able to treat it. Did
you find anyone famous with it? No? Did you herschel Walker? No? Really? Yeah,
(35:25):
you knew about that, right, Uh? No, famous former Georgia
Bulldog running back an NFL star, herschel Walker. He suffers
from d I D and he wrote a book called
Breaking Free. And he has no memory of winning the
Heisman Trophy. Oh no, he has no memory of putting
a gun to his wife's head something that's happened in
(35:46):
his life. Uh, no memory of any of these things.
And he says he has as many as twelve altars,
and um, his his wife, I don't know if they're
still together, I don't think. But his wife many years
thinks like it all makes sense now, Like when she
finally he came out with this, and he just came
out with a few years ago, she was like, well,
(36:08):
this totally makes sense because I saw very different people
through the course of our marriage. Out of nowhere. That
made no sense and she was like it was not
a mood swing and um he uh. He's famous for
not just being a football player, Like he was into ballet,
he went to FBI school, he was an Olympic bobsltter.
(36:32):
What he's he's done all these things he was. He's
a mixed martial artist now and he thinks that these
altars are you know, basically why he has so many
like varying interest in life. Yeah, that is really fascinating.
So what do you think about it? What's your take
on dissociated by Danny disorder? Well, I'm not sure i'd
(36:53):
see the difference between Like that's what a disorder mental
disorder is, is some believing something about themselves. Like I
guess I don't see the difference between someone thinking they
have these different personalities. Like a personality isn't a tangible
thing anyway, Like you can't touch it. So if someone
(37:15):
believes they have four different personalities, then they may as
well have four different personalities. Like I get you what
you're saying. I guess it's all part of that person.
But if it's a disorder, that means it's causing a problem, right,
I think the fact that when I see cases of
(37:36):
what looks like real d I d like herschel Walker,
no memory of of certain things like it's it's certainly
more powerful than you know. That's bad Chuck coming out
because I don't deal with stress. Well, we'll call him Tony,
you know. But if I blacked out and didn't remember
my actions for several days, and those actions included putting
(37:57):
a gun to my wife's head, then that's a whole
different thing. Yeah, you know, because I'm certainly moody. We
all know bad Chuck. We all know Tony Tony nice.
All right, Well, I guess that's it about dissociative identity disorder.
If you want to learn more about it, type those
words in the search part how stuff works dot Com
and they'll bring up this article. And since I said
(38:17):
search parts, time for listener mail. Uh, I'm gonna call
this real world advice for Tony. This is guy's name
is Tony? Oh no, yeah, total accident. Hey, guys, I
recently returned from to the States from living in the
Republic of Korea, mostly teaching English there for the last
(38:37):
four years. Returned home to get a job different from that,
and now that I'm at home, I can't figure out
what to do. Uh. To give you context, I've been
actively interviewing with all sorts of companies, organizations and firms
positions and marketing, sales, business development, finance, consulting. Anyway, I
find most of those roles to be too boring. I
(38:59):
also feel pressured and burden because I studied engineering at
Columbia University and feel a burden to be successful quote unquote,
I am very much stuck in a rut looking for
a job, uh, not excited by my prospects, and asking
what do I want to do. I don't really want
to go back to school because I can't afford to
pay for a master's degree, especially if I'm not certain
(39:21):
or pretty certain that that advanced degree will improve my situation.
So I'm emailing you guys because I'm an advoliser and
I think we share similar perspectives on things, and you
have great careers that are thrilling and aspirable. So I'm
not quite saying I want to be you guys, or
I want your jobs, but I see both these people
that are really interesting salt of the earth folk who
(39:43):
can relate to my situation more so, than my investment management, consulting, law, youring,
med school friends. So Tony h. De Frieda's wants to
know what he should do. Man, that's a tough one.
I've actually been thinking about this too email for a
couple of days now. Yeah yeah, okay, I mean like
he's asking for help, sure, so give it to him. Well,
(40:07):
my first bit of advice would be to narrow down
your scope a little bit. If you studied engineering and
you're looking at marketing, sales, business development, finance, consulting, I
think you're casting your net a little too wide. Yeah,
So my first bit of advice is to narrow that down.
And my second bit of advice is to narrow it
down based on often tell people like what do you what,
(40:29):
what do you love? And what would you love to do?
Ideally what they call blue sky territory here in the
corporate world. It sounds like also to me, you're asking
a lot of people, but you're spending a lot of
time like just keeping it at the forty foot level.
Like maybe you sit for a little while with a
legal pen a pen and like be quiet and gather
(40:51):
your thoughts and then brainstorm after that, just even for
like a half hour twenty minutes something like that. If
for your future that you're thinking about, you could probably
come up with a half hour to dedicate just to that.
But just turn everything off and like really focus inward
and say what do you want to do, and then
go for that, And don't feel obligated to use your degree.
(41:13):
Most people can go to college, don't use the degree
that they got. It's more like they went through college
to show they can go through college, you know. Yeah,
and he didn't list engineer anywhere and what he was
looking into, even though that's what his degrees in. Yeah.
Here's the other thing too, there are very few um
career choices or life paths that go that go absolutely nowhere.
(41:39):
And you shouldn't be afraid to take steps that you
that aren't necessarily the prescribed way to go. Yeah, and
don't be worried about locking yourself in for life necessarily,
you know, like try something out that you love and
it may bear fruit. Yeah, and if it doesn't work,
you can always just go get like a guaranteed job
(42:00):
or something afterward. Yeah. Yeah, And something that interests you
now isn't necessarily going to interest you five years from now.
So yeah, I think you're worrying too much, Tony, or
Tony if this was a very sly way of trying
to get the word out with your resume, and you're
out there and you want to Columbia University grad engineering degree,
(42:23):
who's interested in sales and business development and finance? Let
us know, interested in anything? See captain ing whatever? Uh So,
spend some time, be quiet with your thoughts, trying to
decide what you love and if you could make a
career out of that. And uh, if we hear anything,
then we'll let you know. It sounds like you're up
for adventure because you lived in Korea. We have them
(42:44):
for garden seed. Yeah. We give him a lot of
advice here. Yeah, this is plenty. Take some of that
and do something with it, Tony. Let us know how
it goes. Please. Uh. If you have made any kind
of life choice or decision based on something Chuck and
I had said, we want to know how that went.
You can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast.
You can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff
you should know. You can send us an email to
(43:06):
Stuff Podcast at how Stuff Works dot com, and as always,
hang out with us at our home on the Web
Stuff you Should Know dot com Stuff you Should Know
is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For
more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
Show Links
AboutOrder Our BookStoreSYSK ArmyRSSPopular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!