An Introduction to Dissociative Identity Disorder as a Model for Distributed Subjectivity in Cyberspace
Vernon Reed, ACTLab, U of Texas
Causes of Dissociative Identity Disorder
A new kind of self
Introduction
The very nature of cyberspace is acting as a sort of "universal solvent" to break up our long cherished
notions of monolithic self and subjectivity. The ease with which we can take on new identities and new connectivities
in the virtual domain implies a self which is multivalent, fluid and de-centered-- a self which often operates
in parallel, in different modalities and different capacities. I propose that a model for this new, postmodern,
postrationalist, cyberspatial self can be found in the cluster of psychological manifestations currently known
as Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), and formerly and more popularly as Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD).
There is precedence for my proposal to use what is commonly seen as a form of mental illness as a ground for more
fully realized being. Deleuze and Guattari put forth the ideal of the happy schizophrenic as a paradigm for dealing
with our postmodern condition of existential free-fall (Deleuze and Guattari, 1977). Through a process of "schizo-analysis"
they transform the concept of madness to one of primal creativity analogous to artistic creativity. This schizo-analysis
is an essentially destructive process designed to break down the sorts of Modernist, totalizing institutions that
Deleuze and Guattari see as oppressing and confining our true selves. The result is a nomadic, rootless self, free
of family, belief and structure, and dedicated to relentless change.
The schizophrenic lives in a more or less completely self-constituted world, where fragments of personality are
imbedded in a matrix of delusional projections. It is a world where inner-driven states are substituted for any
kind of consensual reality, and a world where it is almost meaningless to talk about having "personality"
at all. The task of Deleuze and Guattari's happy schizophrenic is to harness this condition of non-referentiality
to the use of forging a new kind of self, in an essentially linguistic transformation, free of the moral and psychological
despotism of Modernism.
Schizophrenia is very different from DID, however, and while much of what I am proposing may seem at first glance
similar to Deleuze and Guattari's project, there are in fact vast differences. The challenge for both myself and
Deleuze and Guattari, is to take a condition held by most to be maladaptive and pathological, and turn it into
a paradigm for better and more effective living. I believe that I have the easier task.
The concept of dissociation
The concept of Multiple Personalities is itself a fluid one, and it has evolved over not just centuries, but millennia,
and throughout cultures as varied as nomadic hunter gatherers of the sub-arctic to contemporary industrial societies.
At its core, this concept involves the inherent capacity of the human psyche to dissociate, to spread itself out
over psychic space and time. Colin Ross defines dissociation quite simply: "Dissociation is the opposite of
association...For definitional purposes the psyche may be reduced to a collection of elements in complex relationships
with each other. Psychic elements include thoughts, memories, feelings, motor commands, impulses, sensations, and
all the other constituents of psychic life. Any two psychic elements may be in a dynamic relationship with each
other, which is to be associated, or relatively isolated and separate, which is to be dissociated." (Ross,
1997, p 116).
Dissociation is an important factor in normal psychological functioning, allowing for a degree of mutability and
adaptability which would be impossible without it. It is probably best to think of dissociation on a continuum,
from ordinary daydreaming, through such phenomena as forgetting where one is going on the freeway, to the particularly
florid manifestations of dissociation which are commonly labeled as Multiple Personality. Although the phenomenon
is usually thought of as purely psychological in nature, it can actually be either biologically or psychosociologically
driven, as given by Ross (Ross, 1997, p 116):
1.Normal biological dissociation-- Forgetting that you got up in the night to go to the bathroom.
2.Normal psychosocial dissociation-- Daydreaming during a boring lecture.
3.Abnormal psychosocial dissociation-- Amnesia for incest.
4.Abnormal biological dissociation-- Amnesia following a concussion.
These biological aspects of dissociation reinforce the notion that it is an entirely natural ability, and serve
to lessen emphasis on pathological manifestations. This sort of grounding in the ordinary is necessary, to blunt
criticism that I am building some kind of fool's paradise on a foundation of mental illness. Nothing could be further
from the truth, as I am claiming that dissociation is not only an adaptive, but a highly desirable strategy for
dealing with the complex, multi-dimensional social relationships enabled by cyberspace technologies. It is more
"sane", if you will, than strategies which try to preserve a monolithic unit of self and agency in the
face of almost exponentially increasing demand for multiplicity.
The earliest known references to dissociative phenomena are to be found in Neolithic cave paintings, in which shamans
can be seen transforming into animals and spirits, presumably for purposes of enabling the clan in its survival
efforts. In fact, throughout the long march of what we call pre-history, such dissociative abilities had great
survival value, by creating a closer connection with the worlds of spirits and animals, with which humans coexisted.
Persons adept at such dissociations were given positions of considerable power and respect in "primitive"
societies.
The shamanistic tradition has survived almost to the present day in the circumpolar regions of Asia and North America,
and study of these cultures provides our best view of how shamanism operated over tens of millennia. Some of the
arguments made about shamanism are similar to arguments which might be given to my proposed schema, so it is illustrative
to examine this incredibly ancient tradition.
Most shamans, as near as can be determined, seemed to be healthy and not suffering from mental disorders. They
were integral members of their societies and often went through long periods of training to become adept, all of
which argue against any sort of pathological component to their craft. The shamans of the far north rarely, if
ever, used hallucinogenic plants, relying instead exclusively on self-hypnosis. They were, in effect, rigorously
trained professional dissociators who functioned variously as priests, weather forecasters, doctors and conveyors
of the oral tradition.
Colin Ross (Ross, 1997) lists 11 dissociative features of the shamans work, and relates each to DID. These parallelisms
are worth mentioning here, as they further ground the experiences of DID patients in a milieu that is not pathological:
Structured, Meaningful Hallucinations-- Shamans deliberately induced
special states of being, in which they could communicate with other realms of
being, such as the spirit and animal worlds. Like the "hallucinations"
of DID patients, however, these events were not indicative of psychosis, but
rather clearly dissociative in nature.
Trance States-- Trance states were essential prerequisites for spirit
communication, out of body experiences, possession, etc. DID patients frequently
enter trance. One of the major diagnostic criteria for DID is ease of hypnotizability.
Hypnotic Anesthesia-- Such activities as walking naked in the arctic
winter, holding hot objects, and self-piercing indicate hypnotic anesthesia.
DID patients often report anesthesia for the pain of abuse, or self-inflicted
pain.
Symbolic Dreams-- Shamans' dreams were often lucid and directed at conveying
information about the spirit world or the real world. Likewise, DID patients'
dreams often involve conveying information about past abuse, organization of
the personality system or other buried information to the waking personality.
Ritual Dismemberment-- Often initiation as a shaman involved ritual dismemberment
analogous to death, associated with spiritual fragmentation. DID patients have,
by definition, undergone dismemberment of the self as a strategy for survival.
Possession by the Souls of Ancestors-- In trance states, shamans would
often deliberately become posed by the souls of dead ancestors, who would impart
advice and wisdom. It is fairly common for DID patients to have at least one
alter who claims to be a dead ancestor.
Possession by Helping Spirits-- These "familiars" were often
invoked by shamans during trance states as helpers and guides. DID patients
almost always have helper personalities, some of whom claim to be from other
dimensions or to be spirits.
Exhaustion Following Strenuous Trance Work-- Intense trance events often
left shamans tired for a period of days. Intense DID treatment sessions have
a similar effect.
Stimulating Dissociation through Intoxication-- As mentioned, it was
rare for shamans of old to use intoxicants, except, rarely, hallucinogenic mushrooms.
DID patients, on the other hand, frequently resort to chemical paths to dissociation,
and often manifest substance-abusing alters.
Out-of-Body Experiences-- A common technique for shamans was astral projection,
or out-of -body travel, where they would project themselves into the spirit
or real world to accomplish tasks. Many DID patients have had out-of-body experiences,
often at the time of childhood abuse, as a means of psychic escape.
Transformation of Identity-- During the possession state of trance, the
shaman became reciprocally identified with the possessing spirit in a manner
analogous to alter switching in DID patients.
As can be seen from this list of correspondences, there is much commonality between the "professionally"
achieved and culturally approved dissociative states of the sub-arctic shaman, and the dissociative states of the
DID patient.
A present day culture in which dissociative phenomena are active in daily life is described by Suryani and Jensen
in their study of trance and possession phenomena in Bali (Suryani and Jensen, 1993). They found that highly dissociative
trance states were an accepted part of the culture and no negative feelings attached to persons so dissociating.
In fact, there are certain persons who are easy to put into trance states by startling and other techniques, and
there is a great deal of good-humored fun made at the expense of these persons, without it becoming at all mean-spirited.
Multiple personalities
The above discussion of DID as related to non-pathological functioning is important, as it will serve to ground
our perceptions of this phenomenon while we tread the increasingly exotic terrain covered by the manifestation
of DID usually called Multiple Personalities. The DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, Fourth Edition, of
the American Psychiatric Association) category of DID was in fact called Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) in
the DSM-III, and so quotes from some materials will refer to the syndrome by that name.
According to Putnam, "The core feature of MPD is the existence of alter personalities who exchange control
over an individual's behavior. it is important to state from the outset that whatever an alter personality is,
it is not a separate person." (Putnam, 1986, p 103, italics the author's). Putnam goes on to quote the definition
of an alter personality given by Braun and Kluft as "an entity with a firm, persistent, and well-founded sense
of self and a characteristic and consistent pattern of behavior and feelings in response to given stimuli. It must
have a range of functions, a range of emotional responses, and a significant life history (of its own existence)."
(Kluft 1984, p
23).
Stephen Braude has constructed an interesting interpretation of multiple alters in terms of what he calls apperceptive
centers (Braude 1991). First he postulates that mental and behavioral states are indexical if a person believes
such states to be his/her own. This is a purely epistemological property of such a state. In contrast, if a person
experiences a state as his/her own, then that state can be said to be autobiographical, a phenomenological property
of that state. Apperceptive centers are defined as "an individual most of whose autobiographical states are
indexical" (Braude, 1991, p 78), and he proposes that distinct alters tend to be distinct apperceptive centers.
He distinguishes multiples from other strong forms of dissociation by claiming that multiples tend to have more
than one apperceptive center at one time, whereas other forms of dissociation, and non-dissociated states, do not.
The sense of self maintained by alter personalities is solid enough that they often appear to each other as being
very different, physically, emotionally and psychologically. They often claim vociferously to be independent persons,
in the face of all evidence to the contrary. For instance, one alter might insist that another's clothes are not
just in bad taste, but are of the wrong size, or even appropriate for the wrong sex. Sometimes alters even see
other alters as being differently located physically, as sitting in a different chair or being in a different room.
In really extreme cases, one alter might wish to kill another, adamantly denying any connection whatsoever with
that alter.
In addition to such well formed alter personalities, it is typical to find a number of personality fragments--
smaller units of personality of limited scope and ability. Typically a personality fragment will be limited to
one affect, such as anger or joy, or one functionality, such as driving a car or absorbing pain. This sort of fracturing
can yield fragments so specific that it is ultimately useless to consider them as personalities.
Alter personalities can be thought of as units of functionality which enable the DID patient to function in the
external world, or cope with the complex demands of the inner world such people inhabit. External duties include
holding a job, managing relationships with other people, taking care of bodily needs, etc. Internal duties include
such activities as managing which alter is "out" (in control of the physical body) at any time, holding
and managing traumatic memories, and settling internal squabbles between alters. A complicated set of personalities
often arises to accomplish these tasks, frequently numbering a few tens or scores of distinct alters.
Although alter personalities tend to be distinct entities which resist stereotyping, there are nevertheless patterns
of types which appear to be common across DID patients. Putnam has generalized a set of such types (Putnam 1986),
varying along lines of functionality and affect. It is worth summarizing them here, as they give us some insight
into the organization of multiple personalities.
The Host Personality-- Usually defined as the alter who has executive
control of the body most of the time. This personality is typically depressed,
compulsively good, conscience-stricken, and feels overwhelmed by circumstances.
Quite often, the host personality is completely unaware of the existence of
other alters until presented with them during therapy. Hosts may not be single
alters, but are sometimes elaborate facades put up by a group of cooperating
alters.
Child Personalities-- These seem to be found in virtually every DID patient.
They are frozen in time and do not age. Such personalities often serve the function
of holding traumatic memories of childhood abuse; they are frequently counterbalanced
by other child alters who embody pure childhood innocence.
Persecutor Personalities-- These personalities will try to sabotage the
patient's life and even inflict bodily harm. They are sometimes responsible
for "suicide" attempts which are really cases of "internal homicide",
where a persecutor personality attempts to kill the host.
Suicidal Personalities-- As distinct from above, these are personalities
driven to kill themselves, as opposed to other alters. They may be unaware of
the existence of the host, or other alters.
Protector and Helper Personalities-- These personalities serve as a counterbalance
to the destructive and suicidal alters. They come in a number of forms, depending
on what the multiple requires protection from. In female multiples, they are
often male alters of great physical strength.
The Internal Self-Helper-- Relatively emotionless personalities, who
provide information bout the internal workings of the personality system. Very
useful allies for therapy.
Memory Trace Personality-- A passive personality who usually has a more
or less complete memory of the DID patient's life. Most alters have access to
only a severely limited range of memories.
Cross-Gender Personalities-- It is very common for multiples to have
alters of opposite sex. In females, male alters tend to serve in such masculine
roles as physical protection and operation of machinery. In male DID patients,
female personalities are older "good-mother" figures who provide counsel,
and tend to be active in the patient's internal dynamics more than manifesting
outwardly.
Promiscuous Personalities-- These alters exist to express forbidden impulses,
often sexual in nature.
Administrators and Obsessive-Compulsive Personalities-- These personalities
frequently emerge in the workplace, where they may be quite competent professionally,
although seen by fellow workers as distant and authoritarian. They may also
function to manage the internal organization of the DID patient's fragmented
personality.
Substance Abusers-- Drug abuse in DID patients is frequently limited
to one alter, and this alter may be the only one to suffer withdrawal symptoms.
Autistic and Handicapped Personalities-- Autistic personalities are often
sent "out" during periods when no other alter is interested in executive
control, or especially during situations of confinement or control.
Personalities with Special Talents or Skills-- Alters displaying great
skill in work-related, artistic or athletic fields are common, and often tend
to be more like fragments than complete alter personalities.
Anesthetic or Analgesic Personalities-- These alters seem to be formed
during initial episodes of abuse, and deny feelings of pain. They are activated
when the body is injured by self or others.
Imitators and Impostors-- Some multiples have alters who imitate the
functions of other alters. In some instances, the impostor will handle situations
the personality they are mimicking cannot.
Demons and Spirits-- These alters sometimes manifest, especially in persons
from rural areas or with fundamentalist religious beliefs. Spirit alters are
similar to Internal Self-Helpers and demon alters are similar to Persecutors.
The Original Personality-- Many multiples have a "core" personality
from which the others are derived. Typically this alter is not active, and is
described by others in the system of alters as having been "put to sleep"
to protect it from trauma.
As can be seen from the above list, alter personalities tend to assume some sort of functional role, either in
the external life of the multiple, or in the complex internal dynamics of the system of alters. Such diversification
according to functionality will be very useful in developing a model of distributed agency in the cyberspace domain.
Causes of Dissociative Identity Disorder
The fact remains, and it must be addressed, that DID is presented as a pathological state, not as a condition of
elaborated opportunities for interaction with the world. To understand the pathological nature of DID, it is necessary
to consider its causes.
Colin Ross elaborates four pathways to DID (Ross 1997). These are:
1.Childhood Abuse Pathway
2.Childhood Neglect Pathway
3.Factitious Pathway
4.Iatrogenic Pathway
The Childhood Abuse Pathway is by far the most common pathway to DID, a sad commentary on the ability of our species
to terrorize its young. Ross has an interesting gloss on this pathway to DID, "It seems to me that the fundamental
problem in DID is the problem of attachment to the perpetrator." (Ross, 1997, p 65, italics the author's).
The abused child is put in a classic double bind by conflicting biological and psychological imperatives. On the
one hand, the child must attach to its parents in order to thrive, or even to physically survive. On the other
hand, the parent to whom she (by far, most DID patients are women) must attach is abusing the child, typically
sexually, as well as physically. The child is powerless to predict, stop, or avoid the abuse and so falls back
on the only avenue of escape available, extreme dissociation.
Dissociation is a skill all children are adept at. It manifests as deep role-playing behavior in play, as total
immersion in entertainment, and as "imaginary playmates." These dissociative abilities are drawn upon
by the abused child to help keep the attachment systems up and running, so the biological organism does not die.
These attachment systems are personified as separate identities, who idealize the abuser and are amnesiac for most
or all the abuse. An additional drive for creating alter personalities is the need to create stable internal persons
who will always be available for comfort and attachment. This strategy is typically effective to the extent that
it allows the child to survive, but becomes maladaptive when the abuse is no longer a factor.
Seen in this light, the cause of DID is not the abuse per se, but rather the bind that such abuse puts the abused
child in. I have been thinking about DID as a model for cyberspace subjectivity for some time, and the heavy involvement
of child abuse in the etiology of DID has always left a bad taste in my mouth, like I was basing my model on something
inherently evil. I feel better proposing this model, as I can frame DID as a creative response to a horrible condition,
rather than a direct result of that condition. A subtle, but meaningful distinction.
The Childhood Neglect Pathway typically results in DID less severe in nature and more responsive to treatment than
that caused by sexual and physical abuse. In this pathway, the abuse suffered by the child is extreme neglect,
often to the point of being locked in a closet or room for prolonged periods, resulting in the loss of a secure
attachment figure. Children thus abused use their dissociative abilities to retreat into an internal world, and
they populate this world with internal figures with which to form attachments.
Factitious Pathway DID is the result of elaborate faking on the part of the patient.
Iatrogenic Pathway DID likewise results from factors other than (at least primarily) childhood abuse. Poor therapy
techniques are at the root of this pathway, creating DID where there was none, or exacerbating mild cases into
much worse ones.
It is worthwhile to note that the factitious and iatrogenic pathways to DID do not necessarily involve child abuse,
or indeed any abuse at all. This leaves open the possibility of a form of intense dissociation on the order of
DID, but not identical with it, based on a postulated "corrosive" effect of information technologies
on subjectivity.
A new kind of self
From the foregoing, we can see that dissociation can be an adaptive response to trauma, one that enables an individual
to maintain some sort of integrity in situations where basic survival systems might break down without such intervention.
I believe that the enabling technologies lumped under the heading of "cyberspace" have so altered our
relationships with the world that it amounts to severe trauma, and that a dissociative strategy will serve to cope
with this information trauma and allow us to thrive and even flourish.
Humans have evolved over the eons as communicating creatures of a certain bandwidth, as dictated by our hard-wired
sensory and nervous systems, mediated through the software of language. Until very recently, we have been interacting
with our physical and social worlds through channels which were essentially serial and hierarchical, a mode whose
final realization resulted in the totalizing intrusions of the Modernist project.
Our evolution has reached a new phase now, one dominated by cultural and technological forces much more fluid and
mutagenic than any previously known. We have created an electronic skin, a bioapparatus, that shapes our reality
and determines the flow of information through our synapses. The crucial and defining feature of this new bioapparatus
is that it operates in parallel mode, presenting us with fundamental incompatibilities with our existing processing
structures.
This incompatibility, as I see it, is the source of the informational trauma being inflicted by cyberspace technologies,
and the way to deal with this trauma is to enable ourselves for parallel processing. DID provides a paradigm for
just such multivalent operation.
As given by Braude above, the defining characteristic of DID is the presence of more than one apperceptive center
(alter) at one time (Braude, 1991). This is all well and good, but most interpretations of DID treat these alters
as essentially functionally distinct units. Indeed, therein lies the pathology of DID: alters do not know what
other alters are up to. Such a completely fragmented world view would model the parallel input streams of our postmodern
information realm, but it would be unable to interpret or synthesize any of it.
Braude counters this commonly held view about the distinctness of alters thus: "Nevertheless, certain features
of experience seem to presuppose a type of psychological unity that can only be explained adequately in terms of
a single underlying subject, even in cases of MPD." (Braude, 1991, p 166, italics mine), and "We have
seen, not only that an alter's characteristic functions inevitably overlap with those of other alters, but also
that they cannot literally be isolated from a common pool of dispositions attributable to the multiple as a whole.
In that case, however, we need not deny either the reality and functional distinctness of the alters or the reality
and functional complexity of the underlying subject to who the entire repertoire of abilities belongs." (Braude,
1991, p188)
A practical interpretation of this model of DID can be found in those clinical cases where treatment has stopped
short of the usual goal of complete integration. In these cases, what is left is a group of alters who are now
cognizant of each other and capable of cooperation to preserve the viability of the aggregate (The Troops for Truddi
Chase, 1990). Such multiples walk a fine line between unity and multiplicity, and this is the very arena where
I place the evolutionary advantage that Deleuze and Guattari attempted to find in schizophrenia.
This, then is the model of DID that I am proposing to deal with the psychic shock of living in cyberspace. It may
even be thought of as an elaborate ruse, a pretending to be multiple, and that is fine as long as the depth of
the pretense is sufficient to enable the required level of dissociation, as is certainly the case in DID.
The new, cyberspatial self will employ those same enabling technologies, which the linear self found so threatening,
to extend into the parallel domain. In particular, we can conceive that the various alters in a DID multiple's
repertory might be represented by semi-autonomous agents. These agents are able to parse multiple input streams
for relevance to the "core" personality, and perform some form of buffered parallel-to-serial conversion
on any data stream selected. This conversion will be necessary, because of the limitations imposed by our biological
apparatus. Possibly advances in genetics will enable us to address these limitations, as well, at some future time.
Our dissociated, cyberspatial self is modeled thus: There is a core personality, a body in space and psyche in
information space. This body is extended, through the bioapparatus of cyberspace technologies, into a realm of
enhanced sensory and communication modalities and this enhanced information load, in turn, places greater processing
and integrating strain on the psyche. Parts of the psyche are now off-loaded, however, onto agents capable of acting
in behalf of the core personality, and capable of coordination with each other. Like the alters of a DID personality,
these agents will come and go, as required by circumstances of the information environment.
These dispersed agents will be interacting with agents dispersed from other core personalities, and so much of
the success of this model will depend on the ability to faithfully encode into them the desires and capabilities
relevant to core needs. This, of course, requires faith that we will be able to solve the problems inherent in
creating such "smart" agents. I believe that current research in "bottom-up" evolution of intelligence
has the promise to provide such breakthroughs, however, so I am optimistic that our cyberspatially dissociated
self will become a reality.
Bibliography:
Braude, S.E. (1991), First Person Plural, Routledge, London
Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1977), Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Viking, New York
Kluft, R. P. (1984), An Introduction to Multiple Personality Disorder, Psychiatric Annals, 14:51-55
Putnam, F. W. (1986), Diagnosis and Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder, The Guilford Press, New York
Ross, C. A. (1997), Dissociative Identity Disorder, John Wiley and Sons, New York
Suryani, L. K., and Jensen, G.D. (1993), Trance and Possession in Bali: a Window on Western Multiple Personality,
Possession Disorder and Suicide, Oxford University Press, Oxford
The Troops for Truddi Chase (1990),When Rabbit Howls, Jove Books