Alter Personalities Quotes

“Why do I take a blade and slash my arms? Why do I drink myself into a stupor? Why do I swallow bottles of pills and end up in A&E having my stomach pumped? Am I seeking attention? Showing off? The pain of the cuts releases the mental pain of the memories, but the pain of healing lasts weeks. After every self-harming or overdosing incident I run the risk of being sectioned and returned to a psychiatric institution, a harrowing prospect I would not recommend to anyone.
So, why do I do it? I don't. If I had power over the alters, I'd stop them. I don't have that power. When they are out, they're out. I experience blank spells and lose time, consciousness, dignity. If I, Alice Jamieson, wanted attention, I would have completed my PhD and started to climb the academic career ladder. Flaunting the label 'doctor' is more attention-grabbing that lying drained of hope in hospital with steri-strips up your arms and the vile taste of liquid charcoal absorbing the chemicals in your stomach.
In most things we do, we anticipate some reward or payment. We study for status and to get better jobs; we work for money; our children are little mirrors of our social standing; the charity donation and trip to Oxfam make us feel good. Every kindness carries the potential gift of a responding kindness: you reap what you sow. There is no advantage in my harming myself; no reason for me to invent delusional memories of incest and ritual abuse. There is nothing to be gained in an A&E department.”
― Alice Jamieson, Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind

“The return of the voices would end in a migraine that made my whole body throb. I could do nothing except lie in a blacked-out room waiting for the voices to get infected by the pains in my head and clear off.

Knowing I was different with my OCD, anorexia and the voices that no one else seemed to hear made me feel isolated, disconnected. I took everything too seriously. I analysed things to death. I turned every word, and the intonation of every word over in my mind trying to decide exactly what it meant, whether there was a subtext or an implied criticism. I tried to recall the expressions on people’s faces, how those expressions changed, what they meant, whether what they said and the look on their faces matched and were therefore genuine or whether it was a sham, the kind word touched by irony or sarcasm, the smile that means pity.
When people looked at me closely could they see the little girl in my head, being abused in those pornographic clips projected behind my eyes?
That is what I would often be thinking and such thoughts ate away at the façade of self-confidence I was constantly raising and repairing.

(describing dissociative identity disorder/mpd symptoms)”
― Alice Jamieson, Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind

“Most organised abuser groups call each particular training a “programme”, as if you were a computer. Many specific trained behaviours have “on” and “off” triggers or switches. Some personality systems are set up with an inner world full of wires or strings that connect switches to their effects. These can facilitate a series of actions by a series of insiders. For example, one part watches the person function in the outside world, and presses a button if he or she sees the person disobeying instructions. The button is connected to an internal wire, which rings a bell in the ear of another part. This part then engages in his or her trained behaviour, opening a door to release the pain of a rape, or cutting the person's arm in a certain pattern, or pushing out a child part. So the watcher has no idea of who the other part is or what she or he does. These events can be quite complicated.”
― Alison Miller, Becoming Yourself: Overcoming Mind Control and Ritual Abuse

“More than one personality was created in the hope of being the daughter Nancy could consistently love. More than one new personality was created in response to Mother's unexpected fury.”
― Joan Frances Casey, The Flock: The Autobiography of a Multiple Personality

“Of course, I should have known the kids would pop out in the atmosphere of Roberta's office. That's what they do when Alice is under stress. They see a gap in the space-time continuum and slip through like beams of light through a prism changing form and direction. We had got into the habit in recent weeks of starting our sessions with that marble and stick game called Ker-Plunk, which Billy liked. There were times when I caught myself entering the office with a teddy that Samuel had taken from the toy cupboard outside.
Roberta told me that on a couple of occasions I had shot her with the plastic gun and once, as Samuel, I had climbed down from the high-tech chairs, rolled into a ball in the corner and just cried.
'This is embarrassing,' I admitted.
'It doesn't have to be.'
'It doesn't have to be, but it is,' I said.
The thing is. I never knew when the 'others' were going to come out. I only discovered that one had been out when I lost time or found myself in the midst of some wacky occupation — finger-painting like a five-year-old, cutting my arms, wandering from shops with unwanted, unpaid-for clutter.
In her reserved way, Roberta described the kids as an elaborate defence mechanism. As a child, I had blocked out my memories in order not to dwell on anything painful or uncertain. Even as a teenager, I had allowed the bizarre and terrifying to seem normal because the alternative would have upset the fiction of my loving little nuclear family.
I made a mental note to look up defence mechanisms, something we had touched on in psychology.”
― Alice Jamieson, Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind

“Because alters often do not reveal themselves early in therapy, and it may take several years for a therapist to observe most of the alters...”
― Ruth A. Blizard

“Multiple personality [Dissociative Identity Disorder] should also not be confused with alternations of mood from happy to sad, characteristic of the cyclic temperament. These are merely emotional swings; personality splits are far more comprehensive.”
― Ralph Slovenko, Psychiatry and Criminal Culpability

“In my series, five percent presented self-diagnosed. In most cases, this was not believed by the initial clinician.

I had the following unnerving experience. Prior to my first multiple personality disorder case, I did not think the condition existed. I saw a young woman who claimed to have multiple personality disorder, and dismissed her claim. She never mentioned it again. Seven years later, while doing research in multiple personality disorder, I asked her to be a control subject for a new multiple personality disorder screening protocol, since I believed she was a medication-controlled paranoid schizophrenic. A protector personality rapidly took over, cursed at me for disbelieving the patient in the first place, introduced me to other personalities, resumed control, and chastized me vehemently at great length. Thereafter, she left, never to return.”
― Richard P. Kluft, Childhood Antecedents of Multiple Personality Disorders

“You can survive but not live with a single identity.”
― Tapan Ghosh

“To preemptively protect the child so that the child may anticipate the abuse rather than be surprised by it, protector parts become persecutors modeled on the abusers. Thus, parts who were protectors when the person was a young child may become persecutors in time, holding anger and rage and meting out punishments to other parts of the self.”
― Elizabeth F. Howell, Understanding and Treating Dissociative Identity Disorder

“I did well at the Department of Justice. Some of my parts were hard workers. My well-developed memory helped me remember people: their names and positions and what they said during meetings. Rather than making me seem checked out, my dissociation made me seem calm and collected. In fact, the general dissociative state I was always in helped me function very well. I collected information, interacted on a personal and professional level, and was quite adept at managing most tasks in my life from this superficially numb and calm place. Most people, including me, didn't notice. This way of being and interacting was really all I knew.

From that mild dissociation, I quickly went into a deeper dissociative state if there was conflict around me, if someone expressed strong emotions, or if something unpredictable happened. Although these difficult situations triggered me, they brought out behavior that helped me do well when the going got tough.”
― Olga Trujillo, The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder

“My mind instinctively developed new parts to specialize in skills I needed to make it through law school. They learned to focus on the important information: the outlines, the nutshells, and what each case meant.”
― Olga Trujillo, The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder

“The SCID-D-R's standard for "distinct identities or personality states"
(DSM-IV, p. 487) is: "Persistent manifestations of the presence of different personalities, as indicated by at least four of the following:
a) ongoing dialogues between different people;
b) acting or feeling that the different people inside of him/her take control of his/her behavior or speech;
c) characteristic visual image that is associated with the other person, distinct from the subject;
d) characteristic age associated with the different people inside of him/her;
e) feeling that the different people inside of him/her have different memories, behaviors, and feelings;
f) feeling that the different people inside of him/her are separate from his/her personality and have lives of their own" (Steinberg, 1994, p. 106).
[The author believes that it is of considerable importance that none of the SCID-D-R's six criteria for "distinct personalities or personality states" are observable signs; each of the six is a subjective symptom or experience that must be reported to the test administrator. This striking fact supports the contention that assessment of dissociation should be based on subjective symptoms rather than signs (Dell, 2006b. 2009b).]”
― Paul F. Dell, Dissociation and the Dissociative Disorders: DSM-V and Beyond

“You have to get safe and know how to work together with your system of selves before you can work on the memories with all the details and all the feelings. Even then it’s not just letting it all hang out. It’s a long slow process that is designed to overwhelm you as little as possible. We can discuss it in depth at a later time. Right now, your situation reminds me of a bunch of folks on a big sailboat that’s taking on water. No one knows where the life vests are, or how to put them on. Half the crew is below decks refusing to come out, and the other half is fighting with each other. Then someone says, ‘Ooh there’s a hurricane, let’s sail into that!’ Doesn’t sound likely that the ship and the crew are going to do very well there, does it? Sometimes, even if you’re not prepared, a hurricane hits, but that’s different from deliberately sailing into one.
‘The first thing is that everyone needs to work on working together, getting safe from harm to yourselves and others. I really believe, from everything you’ve all said, that you’ve all been hurt enough. You don’t need any more harm coming to any of you or your body. You don’t have to like everyone, love everyone, or even trust everyone inside. It’s just a matter of seeing how you can begin to risk to work together.”
― Richard J. Loewenstein

“Anna O. had a third state as well, which today would be called a hidden observer, internal self helper, or center. This was an entity described as follows: "A clear-sighted and calm observer up sat, as she put it, in a corner of her brain and looked on at all the mad business" [p. 101].”
― Colin A. Ross, Dissociative Identity Disorder: Diagnosis, Clinical Features, and Treatment of Multiple Personality

“There were two main reasons that the name of this condition was changed from multiple was changed from multiple personality disorder to DID in the DSM-IV. The first was that the older term emphasized the concept of various personalities (as though different people inhabited the same body), whereas the current view is that DID patients experience a failure in the integration of aspects of their personality into a complex and multifaceted integrated identity.

The International Society for the Study of Dissociation (1997) states it this way: "The DID patient is a single person who experiences himself/herself as having separate parts of the mind that function with some autonomy. The patient is not a collection of separate people sharing the same body." ͏”
― Etzel Cardena, Handbook of Psychology, Clinical Psychology

“Another reason for the name change is that the term personality refers to characteristic pattern of thoughts, feelings, moods, and behaviors of the whole individual. The fact that patients with DID consistently switch between different identities, behavior styles, and so on is a feature of the individual's overall personality. Our phrasing changes in diagnostic criteria clarified that although alters may be personalized by the individual, they are not to be considered as having an objective, independent existence.”
― Etzel Cardena, Handbook of Psychology, Clinical Psychology

“KIuft (1985a, b) describes eight year old Tom, who could "space out," but remain aware of partially dissociated alter personalities. One, Marvin, was based on the character Captain Kirk of the TV series "Star Trek," and on the TV series character "Hulk." Marvin also represented Tom's father. Another alter personality was derived from Mr. Spock, who was also identified with his mother. Two female alter personalities had names taken from 'The Flintstones." The use of fantasy is clearly apparent despite the fantasized characters being identifications with real characters in the child's life. Tom gives us a glimpse of the transition of his fantasies becoming dissociated mental structures.”
― Walter C. Young

“It needs to be emphasized, however, that the ability of fantasy to achieve a sense of reality is not an indication that the traumatic abuses
recalled by patients with multiple personality disorder are fabricated or made-up. What is important to recognize is that the fantasy elaborations that are connected with dissociated states in these patients are efforts at restitution and represent attempts at mastering traumatic experiences through the use of imaginative solutions. This paper is examining the use of fantasy as it participates in the formation of the clinical picture of multiple personality disorder and is not intending to cast doubt on its traumatic origin.”
― Walter C. Young

“The term 'multiple personality disorder' has historical precedent but it perpetuates the mistaken idea that the proliferation of personality is its key feature. The problem is actually not more but less than one personality: a difficulty in integrating fragments.”
― David Spiegel

“The identities may develop in number, complexity, and sense of separateness as the child proceeds through latency, adolescence, and adulthood (R. P. Kluft, 1984; Putnam, 1997).
—Guidelines for Treating Dissociative Identity Disorder in Adults, Third Revision”
― James A. Chu

“Whatever the theory, it is important to note that clinicians such as Kluft draw attention to the clinical error of insisting that all alters talk as one or that only the alter with the legal name should be validated. 'Such stances are commonly associated with therapeutic failure'.”
― Valerie Sinason, Attachment, Trauma and Multiplicity: Working with Dissociative Identity Disorder

“While professionals and patients can be blamed for 'believing' in an illness or having one, patients also report problems when they are believed. Some professionals, they commented, have worryingly simplistic ideas of 'integration'.
Ignoring the separately named alters in effect offers a psychic death sentence rather than aiding integration. If anything it can create a compliant false-self 'main person' who answers to [his or] her name and keeps all other 'states' in silent terror internally.”
― Valerie Sinason, Attachment, Trauma and Multiplicity: Working with Dissociative Identity Disorder

“Peg's very young alters formed around her father's abuse. But when she was 8 another alter group formed, as Peg reported, from ritualized sexual torture by a neighbor who forced Peg to ritually injure two other children. By age 13 Peg had fallen victim to her older brother's sexual violence as well and this led to more splitting. In her teens and twenties Peg added more alters in response even to nontraumatic life disappointments, since the splitting mechanism worked so well to insulate her from suffering.”
― Roger Lewin, Broken Images Broken Selves: Dissociative Narratives In Clinical Practice

“In summary, the conclusion that having DID is generally rewarding is unfounded because the vast majority of the attention such patients receive is skeptical, critical, exploitative, or hostile; they are often ignored if they do present symptoms of DID.
It is certainly possible that some individuals have attempted to feign the disorder. However, the hostile treatment that one would most likely receive would make feigning another disorder more rewarding.”
― David H. Gleaves

“In the world of alters, anything is possible. This is because alters are partly based upon make-believe, and the underiying reasoning is not derived from normal linear logic but consists of 'trance logic', the toleration of completely unrealistic and contradictory ideals which might be found in a state of hypnosis.”
― Phil Mollon, Multiple Selves, Multiple Voices: Working with Trauma, Violation and Dissociation

“There are distinct mood changes with borderline individuals that may be experienced as very alien or disconnected to the client. The loss of memory associated with DID, however, does not occur in BPD, and the mood changes do not constitute a change in personality to the extent that a part of the psyche takes control of the body outside the individual's consciousness.”
― Deborah Bray Haddock

“Mystery is not some kind of an alter ego, but it’s real PERSONAL POWER that’s predicated on your total devotion to the limitless expansion of your sensuality.”
― Lebo Grand

“Children in our culture are familiar with transformation of identity from comics, movies, television, and books. Who has not watched a child zooming around on the sidewalk or in the backyard, pretending to be a superhero or some other figure? Who can doubt the child's intensity of imaginative involvement in this transformation? I think it is reasonable to say that the normal child partly believes in this transformation on a transient basis.
It is not necessary to wonder where the MPD child gets the idea of creating someone else inside to cope with the abuse. The strategy of transformation of identity to gain strength, coping power, even and vulnerability is readily available in the child's environment.”
― Colin A. Ross, Dissociative Identity Disorder: Diagnosis, Clinical Features, and Treatment of Multiple Personality

“All parts need to be honoured for their role in survival and re-framed as helpful before new coping strategies can be developed. The ability to internalise the relationship with the therapist as a caregiver is key to the individuals ability to provide for self-care and management.”
― Sue Richardson, Attachment, Trauma and Multiplicity: Working with Dissociative Identity Disorder