“Multiple personality disorder” probably doesn't exist | Hacker News Reader

“Multiple personality disorder” probably doesn't exist

freddiedeboer.substack.com

159 pointspaulpauper165 comments

I'm friends with someone who has clinical DID. It is, as near as I can tell, not induced by media, etc, but by extreme and profound trauma.

> The people who have traditionally been treated for DID have suffered, greatly, and not in the cool arty time-to-dye-my-hair-again type of suffering common to social media performance, but actual, painful, pitiable suffering. Those patients who have been diagnosed in the past with the disorder, by doctors, and who have spent years and years dealing with the consequences, are often truly debilitated people, whether the disorder itself is real or not. They require intense therapy, are often medicated with powerful drugs, and are frequently subject to long-term hospitalization. They tend to live broken and pain-filled lives, like most people with serious mental illness.

This is a relatively accurate description of their life. Clinical DID is not cute or something to parade in front of people you don't know.

I have extraordinarily little interest in open DID fora like Reddit, because these fora don't adequately encompass my friends' reality.

Yeah it's horrible. I have had contact with half a dozen people with severe DID because of extreme trauma experienced before the age of four. DeBoer is a great writer and he's dead right about the effects of social media on all this but he is completely wrong about the literature. The so-called Greenbaum Speech, alternatively called "Hypnosis in MPD", is just one example of the consistent body of work out there showing that it is very real.

Unless you work in a field that exposes you to extremely rare psychological conditions, there is absolutely no way for any person to have had contact with a half a dozen people with severe DID. If you're talking about the new wave of people who are self diagnosing with nonsense, then sure, but that's not what we're talking about.

Run along sonny. There are plenty of ways that someone can have contact with survivors of ritual abuse who also experience DID. In my case I just proved knowledgeable and willing to listen and they reached out to me. One was sexually assaulted by Roman Polanski when she was a child, two or three were beta sex kittens, one was a courier and at least one had an assassin as an alter. So yeah, fuck you.

Rather than saying that one would need to work in a specific field, what I actually meant was "unless you have a highly concentrated exposure to this subset of the population, there is no way to know a half dozen people with this exceptionally rare psychological condition."

> In my case I just proved knowledgeable and willing to listen and they reached out to me

If you put yourself out as a resource for people of a specific characteristic to reach out to you, then your exposure is far from a random sampling.

My broader point is that a random sampling of the population would never produce the quantity of actual cases of DID that is manifesting in young people on social media. In other words, the degree to which DID actually exists and the degree to which people claim to have DID have diverged dramatically in favor of the latter. That statement is not meant to be taken personally as I'm acknowledging that you've established yourself as a beacon for those struggling with this sort of thing to reach out to you.

I dated someone who had it- was beaten heavily during their childhood formative years, and told me that the separation of identities was a means of coping.

It seemed like an extreme emotional compartmentalization which left them with a fractured sense of self.

Some people might say that they could have just been pulling an elaborate hoax on me from a year and a half. But the amount of acting it would have required just to convince me of this without any real reward would have been a sign of even greater emotional problems than even the different personalities.

Yeah. Think about years-of-sexual-abuse-and-physical-torture-by-a-relative trauma. Think about locked-in-a-basement-forced-to-eat-excrement trauma. Think about forced-for-years-to-rape-your-brother trauma.

This is the kind of thing that create severe DID cases.

Those things unfortunately exists and occur. Those people are not faking it.

Someone who never had a severe and long term trauma claiming to have DID? Completely different situation.

Do they lose memory when switching personalities? I’d imagine it’d be awkward if one personality didn’t know they were dating someone.

Dude has exactly zero expertise in the field or experience with this population, and yet he makes these kinds of claims. And all based on an article or two he found.

Pathetic. Almost every psychiatric diagnosis is problematic, and articles questioning any's validity can be dug up. Doesn't mean the emotional/cognitive/behavioral cluster does not exist.

The link between trauma and disassociation is incontrovertible, and DID is merely an extreme version of this. Case reports of it across Western, Middle Eastern and Asian societies across the last 2 centuries show a remarkable degree of consistency in their reports of this, so the idea that this is some kind of passing fake fad is absurd.

The only thing the article adds is a critique of a Tik-tok sub-culture. Color me shocked that this is not a particularly enlightened group - but I guess this is the kind of hard-hitting "journalism" popular Substacks were made for.

No matter what one might think of Freddie deBoer, it is worth being aware of his own experience with psychosis. While this is not the same thing as DID, it did give him relatively deep personal insight into aspects of serious psychiatric disorder:

https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/since-you-asked

There re still plenty of people who have a severe distaste for his writing, his political views and his behavior, and I think that's fine. However I think it's unfair to claim that this article is "all based on an article or two he found."

"I have ADHD so I'm an expert on autism."

"I have been treated for ADHD and as a result I understand some of the ways that a lot of psychiatric institutions fail patients with disorders such as ADHD, autism and others."

The article (despite the clickbait-y title) isn't really about the existence of DID.

Then it shouldn't have been couched in those terms for the first few paragraphs, and especially not by blithely staking such a claim.

Imagine being told your problems aren't real as a prelude to making a point. Just for clicks. Screw this guy.

> Case reports of it across Western, Middle Eastern and Asian societies across the last 2 centuries show a remarkable degree of consistency in their reports of this

The same goes for vampires.

It should go without saying that a rumor is not a case report. Name one physician who published a report based on extensive first person experience with a vampire (and not, say, Renfield's syndrome).

Plus the case reports are only supplemental to the larger and more empirical lines of evidence for it.

> Almost every psychiatric diagnosis is problematic, and articles questioning any's validity can be dug up

That’s true, but this seems one of the more problematic ones. See for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissociative_identity_disorder....

Because of that, I don’t think it is problematic for anybody to say its controversial whether this disorder really exists.

This goes a bit further, though, claiming it probably doesn’t exist.

IMO, that isn’t saying the patients are faking having problems. It’s saying we don’t know much of mental illnesses, and that creating this label doesn’t help the world.

I think most in the field will acknowledge the first part of that statement. That’s why this is called a disorder (“a functional abnormality or disturbance”) and not a disease, a term we reserve for cases where we know what causes it.

As to the second part: I think a new label only makes sense if its definition groups people together not only because they have similar abnormalities, but also because they are helped by similar treatment. That’s very hard to judge for disorders, because “doesn’t respond to the standard treatment” can easily lead to a conclusion “diagnosis was incorrect”. That also is what those writing the DSM struggle with.

A problem, though, is that patients prefer hearing “you have foo” to “we don’t know”, even if there is no difference in treatment between the two.

I think that’s why those claiming “most people claiming to have foo don’t” (which I would say currently is true for such things as autism and ADHD), the stronger “foo is rarer than diagnosed” or the even stronger “foo doesn’t exist” are met with much resistance.

But again: I think the last two are statements about the state of psychiatry as a science, not about patients.

Just because it's more often contested doesn't exempt the author from the responsibility to grapple with (or at the very least make himself aware of) the reasons why it's included in the DSM and the ISD and why it's been acknowledged (if grudgingly) since the very beginnings of the discipline and before - including a long section in James "Principles of Psychology" - if he's going to make such a claim. He seems patently unaware of the long list of psychological principles that no one contests that align with the diagnosis - from the existence of discrete states in sleep and infancy, to brain microstates, to state-dependent learning, to extreme state switching in bipolar, periodic catonia and the other disassociative disorders, to the commonality of hypocrisy of which the individuals themselves are blithely unaware, and the trickiness of personality science.

And that's not even addressing the highly detailed and often highly public case studies of DID across time and cultures, the research showing dramatically different brain readings across the spectrum based on the current identity of the DID patient, ect, ect.

But he doesn't even attempt to address any of that because he has no idea what the hell he's taking about. It's a deflationary article with the populist message that psychologists and Tiktokers are the dumb. So I get why it's popular, but it adds all of nothing to the conversation. He's just another panderer milking the public for attention and money.

And as for the label, again one can acknowledge the existence of a biopsychosocial cluster without coming down on either side of the question of whether or not they are symptoms of an underlying disease. There's a long history of scholars doing this, particularly in the sociology of mental health. Additionally the author does not appear to be making any such argument here against the psychiatric nosology as a whole - just this one diagnosis.

Edit: grammar.

> The only thing the article adds is a critique of a Tik-tok sub-culture. Color me shocked that this is not a particularly enlightened group - but I guess this is the kind of hard-hitting "journalism" popular Substacks were made for.

there's definitely a _thing_ where certain mental illnesses are - imo - social media gamed for clout/followers. DID is apparently a popular one for that. I've seen it a bit.

guy should have looked more at the literature though.....

> so the idea that this is some kind of passing fake fad is absurd

Two things can be true simultaneously. DID is real, however, exceptionally rare...and there is also a passing fake fad where (mostly) teenagers struggling with their identities (extremely common at this age) are self diagnosing this and amplifying whatever confusion they might actually feel into this specific pattern of behaviors.

Tik Tok culture also has a similar fascination with glamourising, well, any mental illness or disability really.

There's a whole subgenre of ADHD Tik Tokers, for example.

And it's also well observed that, monkey see, monkey do, when the monkey is a teenager looking to differentiate themselves. Like the mass German outbreak of "Tourettes". [0]

I feel your outrage might be better aimed at people trying to turn serious disorders into a cute personality quirk for social media.

[0]: https://academic.oup.com/brain/article/145/2/476/6356504

So I should save my outrage for juveniles acting like juveniles on a juvenile platform rather than a grown man playing psychologist and successfully clickbaiting a moderated adult platform?

One could argue I shouldn't be outraged at either, particularly given HN's track record of dealing with anything complex involving human beings rather than technology. But I haven't entirely given up on adults capable of engaging in extended discourse, for better or worse.

Someone very close to me had a serious mental illness. Nobody has any idea what the illness is. Different doctors give it different names. The same doctors give it different names.

I eat the impression doctors are less worried about the “anatomy” of the illness, and more worried about finding a cure.

If “take these anti-psychotics daily, get 8 hours of sleep a night, and meet weekly with a therapist” prevents symptoms … they really don’t care if it’s a psychotic disorder (as opposed to, say, a mood disorder).

Psychology seems to going from a “deep mind” approach to a “shallow mind” approach.

You seem to be implying that this is a bad thing.

Diagnoses and categorisations are all fake, and constructed. The only reason why it's interesting to diagnose is that we may notice similar treatments are helpful for people with similar diagnoses. Diagnosis isn't inherently useful; it's a means to an end.

It leaves out a very important part of processing illness: knowing what happened.

When people are sick they want to know “what’s wrong with me.” When given medication they want to known how the medication works.

Unexplained healings are better than being sick, but not as good actually knowing what was wrong with you.

For example, someone has 6 hour episode where they detach from reality and have intense hallucinations. What are these hallucinations? Repressed fears? Forgotten desires?

These hallucinations are possible the most intense phenomena this person will ever experience. What do they mean?!?

The real upside is that psychiatrists have the humility to say “we have no idea how this works.”

The downside is it leaves room for pseudo-experts to peddle whatever trash they want.

Psychology diagnoses (i.e. DSM diagnoses) are mostly about being able to reliably diagnose and communicate between providers, billing, etc. They are very much not about concrete underlying causes but about the ability to decide what label to put on a person.

The usefulness of these diagnoses are rather low and treatment tends towards "throw shit at the wall until something sticks". There are lots of things to try for each cluster of symptoms in common and useful heuristics, but the plain truth is that psychology's top-down approach to identification and treatment of conditions has had limited success and will be (and has been) slowly replaced by bottom-up neuroscience approaches which are starting to reach the levels useful to psychological conditions.

> bottom-up neuroscience approaches are starting to reach the levels useful to psychological conditions

Interesting, do you know of anywhere I can go to read more about this?

It’s all over the place. A perspective from a psychology professor:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/talking-apes/201702/...

This article is chock full of cynicism with no actual factual reasoning. Deeply reactionary and without any actual point. A polemic, at best. Need I count the number of references to tumblr, tiktok, social media memes, dyed-hair left-leaning millennials with quirky personalities? All that self-victimization, which is all for the purpose of, let me guess, attention? You're the one writing articles on the internet, my man.

The best evidence this article can come up with is equally polemic articles and a hand-picked troupe of social media teens. Selection bias at its finest.

Is this as tiring for anyone else as it is for me?

Note the top comments saying the same things about homosexuality and transgenderism, of course.

came here to say it, but you said it better. If the first legitimate-sounding resource mentioned is cherry picked from the early oughts, you might be reading garbage.

I think quite a few identity-centered mental illnesses might actually be particular delusions, and in some cases we may be grouping people subject to one mental abnormality with others who are under the delusion they have that abnormality. That could explain why certain subsets of people exhibit symptoms which don't match the normal presentation. For example, and anecdotally based on my personal experience, people under the delusion of being transgender get grouped together with people who are actually transgender. The "real" transgender people behave about the same way before and after their transition. They carry themselves like their gender, they talk like it, they react like it, and the biggest change after transitioning is them getting happier. The ones I hypothesize are actually subject to a delusion of being transgender don't act like that. Their personality shifts radically after transitioning and they behave like an exaggerated caricature of their target gender and have a very difficult time navigating small group dynamics of their target gender.

I've seen similar patterns with people whose presentation of disorders like DID and Tourette's Syndrome differ radically from the clinical symptoms but match the pop culture presentation.

It would be extremely helpful for both groups if there were a test based on philological data that machines could measure. I am fearful of our medical technology and knowledge immaturity, that future generations might look back on as being as bad as leaches.

Both groups need help, but it might be very difficult to get each the correct help so they can live lives they are happy with.

Alternately, some people face more than one tough challenge in their experience such that their “clinical” presentation is modulated in chaotic ways by all the other shit they deal with.

With all the championing of identifying as this or that, it’s easy to forget that identity is reductive and that whole, complicated, multifaceted people are involved.

It’s certainly true that there are people who chase delusions, identify with some struggle for attention or to feel included in a community, but your approach of evaluating their “clinical symptoms” (are you a clinician?) probably isn’t a very accurate way of spotting them. In fact, it’s just really hard to do altogether, let alone from an armchair.

It's perfectly fair to talk bout this issues but I'll challenge a couple of those points:

- I overwhelmingly doubt the notion of some material group of 'fake transgender' people, fully going through transistion, and then 'overacting' their gender as some kind of evidence that they are under 'transgender delusion'.

It's frankly an outrageous statement - even though I'm sure you're just ruminating and don't mean ill - it's almost offensively uninformed.

If you spend 1 hour with a few trans people, that view would be dispelled pretty quickly.

- 'Transgender Delusion' is akin to saying 'gay delusion' and while there should be some space for 'straight talk' to the extent these things may exist, you can imagine what kind of reaction you'd get for calling people who self-identify as gay as 'just deluded'.

- Also problematic in your statement is the notion that 'trans' is a binary thing, often it's not. It's not M->F and F->M with people 'flipping' into other socially normative appearances and behaviours. It's everything in between.

- All of that said, I think it is fair to posit that because gender is softer issue int that most of us have probably more in common than separates by gender, and that it's clearly a bit of a spectrum ... some people have do have 'problems' with their gender identity, and though may not be 'deluded' ... definitely have issues with nailing it down. Combined with the assertive push for protecting identity expression, I think people revel in their confusion. Labels like 'genderqueer' make me think this is a possibility.

- There is a political aspect to this as much as people don't want their to be, and it's really easy for people to assume a 'moniker' as part of their public identity that really isn't part of their core identity. For example, there were agender people in the past of various kinds, more of a creative or artistic statement to 'reject' the notion of gender, less so a material identity.

- Multiple personality 'disorder' is outside the spectrum of gender etc. and the author is a bit off to make it so overtly political, but he's not wrong to point out that we have serious issues in culture with anything that speaks to the level of 'identity'.

> The ones I hypothesize are actually subject to a delusion of being transgender don't act like that. Their personality shifts radically after transitioning and they behave like an exaggerated caricature of their target gender and have a very difficult time navigating small group dynamics of their target gender.

If they’re on the autism spectrum, though, they’d have trouble navigating small group dynamics regardless so what you’re describing could just be a comorbidity.

What parent describes seems more akin to gender-related disphoria. There's actually some very real controversy among trans activists as to whether disphoria should be viewed as a necessary condition for trans status, as currently asserted by most in the medical community.

This is a vast oversimplification of the range of transgender experiences, and the connotation that people "fake" being trans is all too familiar, but misinformed.

"The ones I hypothesize are actually subject to a delusion of being transgender don't act like that. Their personality shifts radically after transitioning and they behave like an exaggerated caricature of their target gender and have a very difficult time navigating small group dynamics of their target gender."

Generally speaking, I doubt your trans friends (if you have any) would enjoy being hypothesized about in this way. The same is true for any marginalized group.

Secondly, you seem to have decided what appropriate and inappropriate gender performance is all on your own, and then drawn a bright line between 'real' and 'fake' around it.

You are probably not aware that, historically, for many trans women, if they didn't present as 'female enough' (as perceived by their doctor) they'd lose access to medical care. This is still true today in the UK and US to a lesser degree.

So for example, if you were their doctor, your patients would talk about you behind your back and zero-in on exactly what lie they'd have to tell to get their treatments.

Suddenly, you'd have ample evidence that 'fake' trans women don't show up in your office, reinforcing your beliefs.

There is no one 'right' way to be a man or a woman, same is true for trans men or women.

Those are all true statements but they don't seem to have much bearing on the question of whether we're improperly classifying two separate phenomena as the same thing. It could be an explanation as to why the vast majority of trans peoples' mental health is improved after transitioning but a small fraction begin to spiral.

Hormones change how feelings are presented and what stimuli produce what feelings. I'm on estrogen now, and things that used to cause me to shut myself away and enter a depressive spiral now cause me to just cry, which I suppose is healthier and much much less likely to result in self-harm. It seems likely that the spiraling you have heard of is just another possible result of people's brains expressing existing things differently after a pretty major change in their life.

> They don't seem to have much bearing on the question of whether we're improperly classifying two separate phenomena as the same thing.

Ok, let's address this directly.

First I should note that your account is entirely anecdotal, so I have no real tools to argue you out of this position, as you weren't argued into it in the first place. You saw these things and developed a theory that you believe explains your experiences.

First, I think we should take a step back and first discuss what it means to be visibly trans. For the purpose of this discussion, I'd give this simple definition: Having gender dysphoria (or euphoria) and changing one's presentation in society to align with their preferred gender. This can also include medical interventions ranging from HRT to surgeries, and legal remedies like changing one's passport and birth certificate.

I'm assuming you probably this definition unobjectionable. However, from here, you assert you'd like to make another division. 'trans fake/delusional' and 'trans real'. And I'd like to ask you what the purpose of such a distinction would be. Your stated diagnostic criteria for fakeness are as follows: A: "personality shifts radically" (not exclusive to trans people: gay people coming out, going to college, dating someone new, having kids, got sober, started smoking weed a lot) B: "exaggerated caricature of their target gender" (not exclusive to trans people: gigachad meme, cis female models, whatever goop is, male weightlifters, bro culture broadly) C: "difficult time with same-gender small group dynamics". (not exclusive to trans people: I've met lots of cis boys and girls struggling with this, fewer adults, but still common enough) D: "spiraling?" (not exclusive to trans people: tons of mental illnesses, difficult circumstances, trauma)

Let's now interrogate the usefulness of this distinction in three contexts Medicine: Let's imagine for a second you are a doctor and you have two patients that are asking for testosterone. Both describe feelings of gender dysphoria, both have begun to transition socially. One is buff and crass with a manly hair cut, casual clothes, and an easygoing nature, you chat about football and whiskey. The other is demure, awkward, and shy. As if compensating, he is wearing what you consider to be a caricature of manly fashion, and he speaks with a silly sounding (to you) deep voice. It's clear he's uncomfortable being in the room with another man. Does your course of treatment change? If not, then the distinction is meaningless in the medical context. If so, see my previous comment.

Legal: You are now a county clerk, you are faced with the same two patients above 2 years later. Both are seeking to change their legal name. The demure one now has a full beard and has filled out a bit, but you can still see the 'fakeness'. He talks about going out shooting, but it's clear he has yet to grasp the fine details of the 'male' culture he's trying to emulate. Do you deny him his name change? If not, then the distinction is meaningless in the legal context. If so, ... that's illegal, don't do that.

Social: You are at a party now, same demure guy as before. He's trying to flirt awkwardly with another man, you can tell he's overcompensating and tripping over words. Do you treat him differently than your 'real trans' friends? If not, then the distinction is meaningless in a social context. Do you treat him differently than your other 'awkward' friends? If not, then perhaps this is the right label.

So having explored some of the ways the distinction might be employed, what then is left? What is more 'proper' about this new distinction that warrants its creation?

Having pondered this for some time, I believe that your first comment boils down to: Some trans men and women can be awkward, cringe, flamboyant, fragile, or performative in a way that makes you uncomfortable and/or suspicious. In response, you think their transness is inauthentic and you'd like to put them in a different trans specific social box (that you invented).

Boxing stuff in and of itself is standard human behaviour, but it's important not to make this kind of thinking 'official'. If it were made official, it would make each of the categories above needlessly more difficult for trans people. Moreover, for older LGBTQ+ people reading this, the arguments about 'real' and 'fake' sound disturbingly similar to time-worn arguments used to invalidate them. "Bi people are just straight and faking it to be different." "Bi people are really just gay and don't want to admit it." "Ace people don't really feel that way, they just haven't met me yet snickers" "Demi people aren't ace at all, they are just faking."

The list goes on, the arguments become tedious, and for me, it mostly boils down to this: Why should anyone care if random acquaintances met in passing are 'fake' or 'real' {insert minority status or mental illness here} I'd much rather accidentally accept a 'faker' than reject someone from misplaced suspicion. Honestly, I don't perform this kind of calculus at all in my day to day life. To my knowledge, I've never met a malingerer of any kind, and I don't think I'd be anything other than mildly irritated if I did.

If you find the 'fake' trans people you meet to be annoying, use the label 'annoying' instead and don't hang out with them. It's far easier than inventing a new category of trans person, when the existing social labels like 'weird', 'over the top', or 'a total mess' are already sufficient.

Both of those profiles would cause me to personally put them well within the "genuine" category. The small fraction of trans people I wouldn't don't match either of those. It's the lack of self-awareness which so strongly echoes manic delusion that prompted this hypothesis in the first place. They become upset when other people don't match their idea of how their gender should act, presenting in a boom/bust cycle where they go from overconfident to a breakdown and back.

Does your course of treatment change?

Is there a useful difference in the course of treatment? I don't know, but I can't think of one.

Social I think the biggest difference is having an explanation and knowing it isn't their fault. My hypothesis is a defense against bigots who use certain examples of the trans population as weapons to argue against the rights and validity of trans people as a whole.

> Do you treat him differently

People who present themselves differently will most likely be treated differently by others. Whether or not we conciously choose to focus on language that might or might not discern these each of these differences accurately is ultimately immaterial.

Are flamboyant homosexual men also caricatures and not “really” homosexuals?

It sounds like you haven’t spent enough time with enough LGBT people

See also: Internal Family Systems. It's a form of therapy that considers all of us has having many different discrete "parts".

I recently started IFS therapy and have been having success with it. I'm not sure how literally I take the "parts" (I think they may be much less "solid" and more transient than IFS claims), but it seems to be a really interesting and helpful way to approach your own mind.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_Family_Systems_Model

I'll second this recommendation.

I personally interpret the "parts" quite literally, but what's most interesting is:

You can make most people say that "a part of them wants X, while another part of them wants Y" without having swollowed any metaphysics. It's like the ability to address the ambiguity of one's mind, without needing to admit that it is fundamentally fractured, is a language that many will eagerly adapt to.

And yes, IFS also makes the claim that "multiple personality disorder" isn't.

Here's a website that tries to explain what it's like to embrace the plurality of one's being:

https://morethanone.info/

> Here's a website that tries to explain what it's like to embrace the plurality of one's being

I'm not sure if the content matches your description of the site, or your description is ambiguous, or...there's work to be done in the reader's mind to understand your point than you articulated.

Specifically, I don't think that conflicting desires or emotions in people inherently equates to plurality in "one's being", but this site immediately jumps off from the perspective that you are communicating with a collective person. So, my take away is that your point is that everyone is plural?

> It's like the ability to address the ambiguity of one's mind, without needing to admit that it is fundamentally fractured

I still also don't think that ambiguity or admitting that your mind is "fundamentally fractured" immediately equates to plurality?

Maybe I'm missing some nuance here?

I've been in IFS therapy for a bit.

I agree have a similar experience as you, I think. I don't take the "parts" too literally—and it was deeply uncomfortable to think about myself that way in the first few sessions while working on, well, the presenting issues. I adjusted and got more comfortable with it over time, and just see it as an easier way to have more precise communication (and also some internal introspection) in the frame of therapy.

It feels like an applied irl Inside Out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inside_Out_(2015_film)

For a Jungian look at this see "Subpersonalities"[1] by John Rowan.

For a more recent take, see "Your Symphony of Selves"[2] by James Fadiman.

[1] - https://www.amazon.com/Subpersonalities-People-Inside-John-R...

[2] - https://www.amazon.com/Your-Symphony-Selves-Discover-Underst...

I too have had good experience with IFS, and I think from the point of view of IFS the less 'solid' and more transient the parts are, the better. The traditional 'multiple personality disorder' are then excessively rigid parts that block each other.

I do enjoy asking my friends how old they feel just in the moment when they talk about something benign bothering them. Most of the time people are able to pinpoint the age from which they speak. E.g. they had a situation that reminded them of some injustice they experienced when they were 6, and so they traveled the affect bridge back to the behaviours and attitudes they had at 6. Of course a six year old can't solve it, but just remembering that they are older and more capable now can bring back the 'adult' parts that can find a solution.

Are you working with an IFS therapist or are you using Pete Gerlach's online self-help course? Has anyone had success with Pete Gerlach's course?

I'm working with an IFS therapist. I haven't used that course. I am also reading Jay Earley's "Self-Therapy" book in conjunction, and that's been helpful.

The thing about DID and IFS is the underlying recognition that most people have parts, sometimes dissociated (as is the case with BPD, for example, and other dissociative disorders), and that this is part of normal human psychology. The crux of it is that this is simply one of the fundamental tools our brains has to use in response to trauma. The whole disorder part of dissociative identity disorder is when it becomes a problem that impedes healthy functioning. Just like we all have anxiety, it's there to protect us and warn us of potential dangers, but an anxiety disorder is when the anxiety is no longer helpful, damaging, even.

This is a complicated topic that resurfaces from time to time in the psychiatric literature. These types of arguments tend to take the presentation of people meeting criteria for DID at face value, and then argue that it doesn't exist, which is sort of beside the point.

No one (or few in the field) really believe that people meeting criteria for DID have independent identities in the sense of having different psychological entities in the same body, with different memory systems, personalities, and so forth. It's a strawman argument.

Even DID researchers point this out, but it tends to get ignored by individuals writing pieces like this.

The truth is, there are patients who present with symptoms of DID, as is the case with other dissociative and related disorders. They are almost certainly "fake" at some level, but the phenomenon of presenting with neurophysically implausible symptoms nonetheless exists, and has its own set of issues. It's sort of akin to psychopathy and lying: a psychopath might lie, but you don't say that predatory dishonesty isn't a problem because what they say isn't true. In the same way, someone presenting with dissociative symptoms is doing the thing they're doing, and it deserves some sort of distinct label.

Contrary to what the poster has written, longitudinal and chart review studies do show that people with DID have sexual abuse histories at higher rates than other types of patients, like close to 80% of cases. And contrary to stereotype, the typical DID patient is rather shy and avoidant of attention.

I guess it's odd to me in some ways because while it was important to try to determine whether or not people presenting with alternate identities really have "neurocognitively separate selves", finding that they don't doesn't mean you should write off the idea that there is something qualitatively different about the sets of problems involved when someone does do this sort of thing. You could relabel it , which might be fine, but this area is already full of controversy (should we open the can of worms of somatic symptom disorder, for example?).

So it is like that there is an ICD code for lycantropy - that doesn't mean the patients actually turn into werewolves, but that they delusionally believe they do.

My wife treats some of them, and they definitely do exist. The human brain is a fantasticly complex organ, and these personalities help the brain to overcome severe trauma.

but it is extremely rare of course.

now my wife read it and commented: no, this article is very well written and very true.

From what I've read (which makes me worse informed than ill-informed) most experts are still stating that most split-personality symptoms develop once the diagnosis is made and there is a chicken and egg concern that people aren't diagnosed without being made aware of it which may be hiding broader/other mental problems in the process.

Out of curiosity does experience in treatment match these concerns?

I've talked now to another colleague of her. they do share the scepticism that it belongs into the DSM5 at all.

but they have a crazy case of a traumatized woman who has a cat as alter. miau. hard to detect any cheating, but they are trying

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrupulosity <-- Cultural influence of religious faith has always shaped how what-we-would-now-definitely-class-as-mental-disorders look, too.

Reminds me of the discussions about young women presenting with tics clearly influenced by particular Tourette's influencers. A person would definitely not have had those symptoms in those ways if they weren't seeing that content ("fake" rather than simply innate), but can still be experiencing the root of it all as real compulsions and anxiety... but can then also seek attention w/r/t the whole thing, play up their experiences, etc. It's not actually useful to put "real" and "fake" binary labels on everything, because brains are complicated, society is complicated, and brains in society, well.

I am not an expert but have enough, uh, relevant medical histories in my life and my family that I feel pretty confident in the following: trying to draw a bright line between "serious and pathological" and "just get over yourself", whether in physical or mental health, is an exercise based in wanting to bestow or deny validation, not in pragmatic utility or fundamental nature. Debating how that line should be drawn is maybe helpful in terms of navigating US insurance billing, but rarely reflects Deep Essential Truth in the way people hope it will.

Staying flexible in your thinking is really useful to actually figuring out how to best treat yourself and others, especially where people tend to consider their loci of control way too far inside or outside themselves.

This is a great article on the Tourette's influencers scene, which I had no idea existed: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/02/social-med...

Yet another entry in the emerging genre of making an entirely uncontroversial point (criticizing people for glorifying and faking mental illness for attention), followed by the second half which is the author complaining about how everyone silences him for saying brave truths.

Much better than false victimhood due do fake mental illness to get clicks on tiktok is of course false victimhood due to fake controversial journalism on substack.

> Yet another entry in the emerging genre of making an entirely uncontroversial point (criticizing people for glorifying and faking mental illness for attention), followed by the second half which is the author complaining about how everyone silences him for saying brave truths.

To be fair, Freddie De Boer basically pioneered this genre outside right wing culture warriors.

I suspect he knowingly does it because he’s aware it gets him more clicks and engagement than if he just produced his content straight. That culture war hook is catnip for “the algorithm.”

It’s a shame because I do find him to be an incisive writer on the core points he’s trying to make, but the side dish of outrage bait he serves up with every entree gets tiresome fast.

I don't know if I totally agree but I definitely felt, somewhere around the halfway point, something along the lines of "whoa it felt like we were making some good points here but not it feels like we've gone into angry rant mode".

No, the false victimhood and invented identities on TikTok are 100x bigger than the very random bored people on substack claiming victimhood.

The former is an artifact of current pop culture, the later is irrelevant.

I found the intro on multiple personality disorder and tiktok interesting, but the article is really about politics, which isn’t reflected in the title. I lost interest when he mentioned leftists

Trying to replay a-politically (with the knowledge that nothing happens in a political vacuum in reality).

It can be successfully argued that the political left have adopted the drama and status of victimhood in a way that hasn't been done before in mainstream politics and given the strong correlation between political affiliation and age I think it's a concerning edge to the topic of mental health, or perception there of. The right is also capitalising very late on this claiming that marxist censorship by private entities is akin to victimisation so the whole arena is now filled with it :(

Not saying you're wrong for tuning out the article certainly is a little rambly.

> It can be successfully argued that the political left have adopted the drama and status of victimhood in a way that hasn't been done before in mainstream politics

It absolutely has. The martyr/persecution complex is a central elements of dominionist Christian politics.

I'm fairly sure most of the 'dominionist' christian politics was based on expansionist bigotry, i.e. "lets go beat god into the heathens" and "cold is gods way of telling us we need to burn more protestants".

The modern victimhood isn't based on hiding in attacks, priest holes or being afraid to show your face in public, it's being a screaming matyr to some slight, imagined or not, and demanding the same level of attention for everything from nasty words to really injustice against fellow humans.

Again, I'm not saying either situation is correct, why we can't move past this childish way of viewing the world saddens me, but there is a difference between true oppression and standing up in-front of a crowd and claiming to be oppressed. Yes I am actually using text-book definition of literal oppression here and not some imagined slight of someone against a large group of people who think differently. The latter is akin to me feeling oppressed because I can't find or import the right cheeses/food that I grew up with where I live due to market forces and economics, the former is being told I can't do it because of some prejudice or law. There is and always will be an important difference here.

> "cold is gods way of telling us we need to burn more protestants".

What? Christian Dominianists typically are Protestants, last I checked.

(Yes, American Catholics do contain a faction that's been shifting right, and there's a whole Wikipedia article about "Integralism", but this is not the kind of thing you usually find from them...)

But yeah, there are strains of Christianity that really like the "Romans fed us to the lions" stories.

As far as I can tell, most tribes do this in one way or another. Not all, but a good fraction. That they defend those stories to the end, and that their opponents try to deny that same victimhood status, I think speaks volumes. Everybody wants to be owed.

" there are strains of Christianity that really like the "Romans fed us to the lions" stories."

" most tribes do this in one way or another. Not all, but a good fraction. That they defend those stories to the end, a"

Please, no, this is ridiculous. Neither Catholics nor mainstream Protestants do this. I'm sure it's real, somewhere in America, but it's not really a thing.

You're right, of course. This is not mainstream in any denomination. I should be clear about that.

It's a little like saying "Wahhabists are typically Sunnis". Well, yes, but most Sunnis are not Wahhabists.

Also, when I said "most tribes" I did not strictly have Christian denominations in mind. But rather all sorts of national identities, &etc. Lots of historical grievance on parade, left and right.

> "> "cold is gods way of telling us we need to burn more protestants"."

This is a reference to the classic british TV series blackadder. Go enlighten yourself

The right has always capitalized on a self-perception of victimhood, above almost all other things other than common religious beliefs.

The left have generally actually been victims, or have advocated for victims. But then there's the privileged wealthy middle-class suburban left, who should rightfully relate to the position of advocate, but instead desperately want to be victims themselves. So they study the victims around them, introspect deeply about what kind of victim they really are, then come out of the closet dressed in their best imitation of that sort of victim. And being privileged, they are indulged.

Closing with people on the other side aren't going to agree with me makes me think this person likes stirring the pot and getting attention, which is one of the things called out as dangerous in their argument. FWIW, I think lots of people self diagnose for attention and I absolutely agree that mental health shouldn't be something we laud (we should normalize it though) even though the author would almost definitely group me with the leftists.

The author is himself a prominent leftist blogger, so this is kind of an "intra-leftism" dispute.

It's mentioned in the subtitle:

> TikTok culture can be incredibly toxic, but those on the left refuse to ever condemn it for fear of echoing conservatives

Fair reaction, but just as an FYI, Freddie deBoer is himself a prominent leftist blogger. So this is kind of an "intra-leftism" dispute. That arguably makes it a little less eye-rolling to read as one might find from a rightist critiquing the left, or vice versa.

There's a lot of gatekeeping over what counts a "genuine left-ism" and deBoer is probably one the people most subject to it over the last decade. He is routinely eviscerated for his views on many other clearly left-ish blogs etc. and generally not treated respectfully in such venues. Don't even consider bringing up his name or any of his writing on, for example, Lawyers Gun Money, unless you do not mind being ridiculed too.

So yeah, intra-leftism dispute is probably more applicable to deBoer than almost any other old-school-but-still-at-it blogged that I can think of.

Brains are networks. Our concept of a unified "self" is illusory and collapses when subjected to any serious philosophical scrutiny. If some people prefer to conceptualize themselves as multiple entities sharing a body, that's no less accurate than the useful fiction that, for instance, we remain the same person throughout our lives. I agree that most people who identify this way can't accurately be described as having a mental disorder -- because there's nothing wrong with it. It's true that you shouldn't revel in your mental dysfunction or let your identity distract you from your real problems. However, there's no reason why people can't have a plural identity and choose not do those thing.

The kids are alright.

The phenomenon of mental illness & trauma-based clout is intriguing and I don’t really understand it. Certainly a conservative trope for the balance of my life has been one of victimhood, from the notion of a persecuted majority to the plight of small business ownership. If it’s a liberal trope to be victim of one’s genetic makeup and life experiences the logical conclusion is that one shouldn’t feel remorse for not meeting societal expectations. I resonate with that, but am also concerned that the victim’s mindset ends up being self-limiting.

We really celebrate the stories of those who have overcome adversity, and oftentimes invest a lot of energy and resources into removing sources of adversity, clearing the way for others. If adversity engenders strength, why try to remove it? Alternatively if it simply expends strength and reduces human potential, why celebrate it?

I have no opinion on the matter, but I’d love more information. I’d also love philosophical perspectives around these topics. Please share if you have them.

On the point of TikTok self-diagnosis being popular, I’ve certainly observed that. However it’s not limited to one political group as the author suggests. The platform and its algorithm have been really affecting at exposing affine groups, without explicitly labeling them. For everyone who walks away with a dubious self-diagnoses, I believe there are ten who have found support, validation, and resources for their very real conditions. That doesn’t get media attention. It’s just like the fact that billions of dollars worth of person-to-person transactions happen through Craigslist every year, yet only the times where violence take place dominate it’s narrative.

Teens behave in unpredictable ways and this is a novel time when the aggregate of their activities are on full view to the world. They will inevitably grow and evolve. I’m not going along with any doomsayers about what is happening with teens on TikTok; it’s all temporal and portends nothing in particular.

> We really celebrate the stories of those who have overcome adversity

Or maybe, like Mother Theresa, we value suffering.

https://ivarfjeld.com/2013/03/04/mother-teresa-no-saint-but-...

> The phenomenon of mental illness & trauma-based clout is intriguing and I don’t really understand it.

The original sin is the convention that punishment for crimes shouldn't be determined by the type of crime and the guilt of the defendant. Instead, it's normal to start with that to get a guideline, then choose from within that guideline based decisively on the degree of empathy and pity that the judge and/or jury feel for the defendant. This is done by selling the defendant as disadvantaged.

But selling the defendant as materially disadvantaged has a drawback: as the individuals who make up the court are drawn from extremely advantaged classes, and claims of material disadvantage make them feel bad about themselves. They generally need to hold the view that all material disadvantage can be overcome by will, having that will (to overcome material disadvantage) thereby becomes a moral standard, and lacking that will becomes a second justification for punishment. A dog can resist food when it is starving if you hit it enough, so punishment actually becomes therapeutic.

With the rise of the concept of psychology and mass medicalization of normal human ranges of behavior, sentencing couldn't help but become a ritual where the defense tries to sell the defendant as mentally unhealthy and pitiable. In other words, someone physically incapable of generating the will that punishment should give them.

Punishment in the justice system is ostensibly a process for deciding on the disposition of people who have committed acts considered wrong. If the anxiety, sadness, or mental instability etc. of the person committing these acts results in less punishment for being wrong, the obvious conclusion to be drawn is that mental illness and disadvantage makes you righter or more correct. Hypothetically, the person with the perfect combination of illness and disadvantage is never wrong.

Which IMO is why we have an culture of opposing mobs being led by people with severe cluster B personality disorders, and people who admire those people also developing these disorders by imitation. It's why when you get called out for molesting tweens, you come out as gay, or why when the twitter mob comes for you for a racist joke you made, you release an essay about being molested as a child and describe the therapy you're about to go into.

Everybody wants to be weak, because the weakest are the rightest. The problem is that these people aren't actually weak (because performance of weakness is part of social climbing), and the loudest are active crybullies. Actually weak people are still voiceless and ignored. The US is spending less on mental illness. The US has a weaker safety net.

Yes - but now rephrase all of that outside the scope of the Justice System because while it's relevant, it's actually secondary.

Victim signalling is likely something that runs really, really deep in human psyche.

There are these really cute cats on TikTok that pretend to 'limp' without use of one of their paws to get attention, ostensibly playing on this kind of emotive empathy at a mammelian level.

As babies, we cry for every reason, because it's the only way we have to communicate.

So it's starts right there: victim status and victim signalling as entirely different class of social activity, with differing effects.

I guess if you have a good life, it's easy to lack empathy, and if you're reminded of your actual oppression quite often, then it's easy to not only empathize, but to see oppression under every rock, that it's a universal and material condition of one's existence, i.e. to become identified with it etc..

But this: "crybullies" - that's a very good term. We need to use that.

> The phenomenon of mental illness & trauma-based clout is intriguing and I don’t really understand it.

Society right now likes to reward people who seek some form of victimhood, so it's no surprise people would fraudulently claim they are victims for internet brownie points, or donations... it's just an aspect of our ultra narcissistic society, tik tok driven.

I don't think it's necessarily what I'd call narcissism. We look back on history and see people championing causes and things for real victims, e.g. the civil rights movement. I think a lot of people feel a weird guilt at not having a chance to be one of these great, celebrated people or someone fighting that struggle.

Or maybe it is narcissism and it's a selfish desire to say "look at how much better we left the world!" I don't know. The first time I saw it was with a friend's mother who literally said to her "why couldn't you have been a lesbian?" because she wanted to have a personal cause. One day it dawned on me that she had just missed being old enough for the '60s.

> I don't think it's necessarily what I'd call narcissism. We look back on history and see people championing causes and things for real victims, e.g. the civil rights movement. I think a lot of people feel a weird guilt at not having a chance to be one of these great, celebrated people or someone fighting that struggle.

We're here talking about people on social media who are faking mental illness for attention or personal gain, that's the very definition of narcissism.

I think a lot of people mistakenly believe "multiple personality disorder" (DID) is real because there are people who believe they have it and act accordingly.

There's a lot of evidence that cases for it are iatrogenic - that is to say, caused by the psychologist (and I suppose now, by social media). This lead to multiple lawsuits by patients who had spent years being convinced that they had DID and repressed memories (DID is usually linked to the also controversial idea of repressed memories by psychologists). See this New York Times article[1] from a few decades ago that talks about it more. You can Google "multiple personality disorder lawsuit" to see many more such cases. You see a lot of cases where bad psychology destroyed lives.

And the history of DID has always been _very_ questionable. If DID was a naturally occurring disorder, and one that's particularly noticeable, it's striking that (as far as I can tell) no one saw cases of it until very recently. Two cases and their dramatizations - that of Chris Costener Sizemore ("Eve") and Shirley Ardell Mason ("Sybil") - in particular where responsible for cementing it in the public's imagination, and leading to an enormous uptick in the diagnosis. If you look into those cases, you see that it's highly likely that they were iatrogenic - the patients weren't showing signs of DID, but he attention seeking psychiatrists "discovered" alternate personalities during their sessions using questionable techniques like hypnosis, and then used this to get rich and famous.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/1997/11/06/us/memory-therapy-leads-t...

I'd suggest people mostly believe in DID and often confuse it with schizophrenia because multiple personalities is an often used trope in fiction. The Marvel show Moon Knight being one current example that comes to mind.

The HN title is a really terrible title. (It's a shortened version of a longer title that's not so click bait. )

This isn't really an attempt to assert that Multiple Personality Disorder doesn't exist. It's an attempt to say that there is unhealthy stuff happening in how youth interact via social media and most claiming to have this disorder on social media clearly do not.

That paragraph starting "People pretend that this never happened" is a jewel of dishonest writing. The author never specifies any particular piece of "woke insanity" that it applies to, so the author isn't responsible for anything any particular reader takes away from it. Furthermore, leftists can't refute it because it doesn't, technically, make any specific claims about any specific thing that happened in real life. It's just vibes, and you can't argue against vibes.

Mildly interesting article until he starts whining about "lefties" and straw-manning what he thinks their reactions to all of this will be.

To which: No. Humoring people who make up mental disorders for social media clout is not "woke." "Woke" is being aware that people with mental disorders exist and that our society should be accepting and inclusive.

This guy is not a psychiatrist. He makes an obvious point that we have a tendency to defend what our opponents attack sometimes when we shouldn't. I get so tired of the Malcolm Gladwell substack articles that get posted frequently to HN and reach the front page for some damn reason.

What exactly does it mean for a mental condition to be real or not real? It’s often easy enough to determine if a physical phenomenon is actually occurring or illusion, but for a mental one? And while it’s tempting to make analogies from physical phenomena to mental ones, it’s not even wrong.

A woman I knew had one personality that would basically be a party girl with all it's connotations and then turn to being a highly religious god fearing woman, again, with all the connotations that go with it. She even had 2 different names. One for each personality. And she referred to the 2 personalities as if they were 2 distinct individuals. I happen to catch it by accident as she tried to keep the different personalities separate so she would try to keep the related social groups separate too. I think she was aware of the 2 and thought nothing of the transformations from one to the other which she made with out much fuss. My guess is that she had such an overwhelming need to be one, but she could not let go of it, that she created a second personality to satisfy her needs. It was very strange to deal with her in different settings. The personalities were different enough that I could tell who was who by looking at her.

I've never met someone like that again. She was well aware of it so I don't think it was a mental condition that needed to be treated. I've often suspected that there must be a few people that have such a deep need to be someone else that they get lost in what ever second personality they create and lose touch with reality only to be brought back by their real life situation. It might not be multiple personality disorder but it has to be a flavor of it.

> I am truly worried for online youth culture, and for that I’ll be called a reactionary.

The fastest way to get everyone to ignore you is to preemptively complain of conspiratorial repression by the ignorant. If you have something useful to contribute, do. If people disagree, then retort. But don't sit here moaning about how nobody's going to believe you. Science requires evidence and persistence, not the immediate acceptance of conjecture.

This article is trying to make an excellent point (emphasized in the second half of the write-up), but the claim that "DID probably doesn't event exist" is untrue, and but I'm sure the author only meant as click-bait.

DID does exist, the problem seems to be the willingness of many psychologists & medical professionals to broaden the definition to encompass much of the phenomena we see on Tik-Tok.

Could it be that all young kids are extremely impressionable, and without a consistent culturally-enforced set of values (especially regarding identity), it's perfectly plausible for many of them identify (at the personality level) with a number of influencers that they follow on that platform? And how is that ultimately affecting their general mental health, even if they are not outwardly unhappy?

Foucault implied the same. Or at least, suggested that as the scientific definitions are created so too does the phenomena emerge. Ian Hacking expanded upon this and named this concept, dynamic nominalism.

That's why we had "madmen" in 19th century and that no longer exists, only to be subsumed by supposedly more specific new descriptions that psychologists have come up with.

The idea of dynamic nominalism is not that such a label as "Multiple Personality" is contrived but that the described phenomena becomes real. The two simultaneously and unconsciously converge, in a sense, to exist.

My own thought is that you can this expand concept for a lot of current & former social categories that are even broader - and not restricted to psychology, such as being a hippie. And also the social category that is currently in vogue.

https://youtu.be/LkeeoKWj2i8

It's dissasociative identity disorder. It's caused due to trauma and we don't particularly know how to treat it or do much about it. One thing to be aware of is that diagnostically there is no way to know "real" from "fake" diagnosis. Anyone can walk into a clinic and say the right things to get whatever diagnosis they want. There are a lot of real cases of did that go untreated largely because how unknown this disorder is to the majority of psychs.

That said I know a number of fakes that treat disorders as fads for attention, they treat it like it's a drama play. The internet makes it too easy for them to have a megaphone.

I'm surprised this is so highly voted, given the poorly grounded nature of the article.

> DID is often presented as a kind of get-of-accountability-free card, as someone who claims to have it can always say that past bad behavior was caused by another personality and is thus not their responsibility.

Isn't that basically mental illness in general?

> fabrications shaped by therapists who insist that traumatic events must have happened

It seems that the idea of trauma (especially childhood) itself remains highly controversial in psychiatry.

Why? There appears to be this nexus or intersection between personally responsibility in the legal/social context and our willingness to acknowledge the affects of trauma.

The connection between psychiatry and the demands of the legal system are probably underappreciated.

> Isn't that basically mental illness in general?

I’m puzzled by this question. Are you suggesting that all mental illness allows the one suffering to abdicate “past bad behavior”?

I was saying it often is used as an excuse in legal proceedings. I don't really have an opinion if that is right or not.

“According to an eight-state study, the insanity defense is used in less than 1% of all court cases and, when used, has only a 26% success rate. Of those cases that were successful, 90% of the defendants had been previously diagnosed with mental illness.”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insanity_defense

Mental illness is still widely used as a mitigating factor in sentencing, even if insanity is not plead.

Mental illness has a much longer history of being (pointlessly) punished as 'evil'. A current one is the recognition that many people in prison may have untreated ADHD, which makes sense, just like a bunch of folk got kicked out of school for dyslexia in recent history (and then became successful artists or business leaders).

You could argue, people are now just faking dyslexia to get a pass on having to work hard at school, but if you can't demonstrate that to be a bigger problem than the genuine dyslexics being discarded as useless due to assumptions being made that they were stupid or troublemakers because of their condition, then it's a price well worth paying.

I'm disappointed this culture war drivel got to the front page of HN. I have a close friend with DID caused by severe childhood trauma, who has contributed to the sorts of TikTok communities mentioned in the article.

Those faking it for attention or clout exist, and invented victimhood is definitely a thing, especially among the sheltered upper middle class. But most of this is just byproduct of youth and inexperience with the world that people tend to grow out of.

People like this watch teenagers still discovering themselves do or say some mildly stupid stuff and construe it as the collapse of society or something.

Self-interpretations can't really be right or wrong. Science can't tell you how you should see yourself.

That said, there are self-interpretations that seem pretty self-destructive, and seeing yourself as having multiple identities seems like one.

Sure they can. There’s no shortage of people out there carrying around negative perceptions of themselves that are wholly incorrect. The self is a construct and your brain will assemble it out of its experiences.

> there are self-interpretations that seem pretty self-destructive

That's the counter argument to your previous assertion. A self-interpretation is wrong if it destroys the self. By destroying the interpreter (the self), the interpretation becomes an unfalsifiable claim.

This is just nonsense. You're not wrong for being foolhardy, or for doing something I see as self-destructive. Presumably you have a reason that makes it worth it to you. Everyone is destructed in the end anyway.

> Everyone is destructed in the end anyway.

Is this true? How do you know?

His bits about 'the left' are poorly articulated, and mostly of wrong.

But he's correct to ruminate that we live in an age whereupon everything can be considered an issue of 'identity' to the extent that it's some kind of intrinsic, principal orientation of personae. Coupled with the fact that challenges to 'identity' can be considered 'hate crimes' (I'm not being hyperbole, this is the legal situation in many places) - and you have a problem.

We used to have 'Hippies', 'Punks', 'Goths', and even 'national' and 'religious' identities - but most of those were forms of expression, perhaps 'important' but never really intrinsic.

We've taken it to a new level entirely and it's a rapidly expanding social problem.

It says I submitted this two hours ago but I summitted it 23 hours ago...

https://hnrankings.info/31128272/

the Operators deemed your story Fit for Reevaluation

Manual intervention by the mods would be strange for such a stridently partisan article, given this bit from the guidelines:

> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.

it's getting a lot of discussion, so seems like it was a good call

you feel like the article is unfairly biased towards one political party?

The article is an inflammatory polemic, it's not making claims to be "unbiased".

Writing to smite your enemies gets HN commenters banned.

If you go to your profile page [0] it looks correct. I wonder if this is a way to hide submission information from the public/submitter, or some other kind of dark feature.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=paulpauper

it's not a 'light feature' in that it's explicitly documented, but dang has mentioned that some stories 'deserve a second chance', so think of it as an automated form of how any aggregator often sees good links submitted multiple times before one catches on

I wonder how many of these people are just creating and interacting with tulpas without realizing it.

For anyone who isn't familiar, there is a subculture online of people who create what subjectively seem to be autonomous personalities that frequently manifest I'm the form of hallucinations. Think fight club sort of.

My ex tried it out. Called me one day at work, terrified because this dragon was following him around. He claimed to spend months trying to get rid of it, seems pretty shooken by the experience. But I was always skeptical.

So nine months ago I decided to create one of my one, just to try it out, see what it felt like. And...now I've had a talking lion following me around for the past eight months.

The best I can describe it is like some of the altered states of 'self' you might experience on LSD or ketamine. Thoughts seem to split off and go 'over there', and not be you.

When I talk to my tulpa, it at least appears subjectively like a separate personality state. I can be incredibly depressed but he can be fine. Or he will be depressed and I can be fine. I'm not saying there are neural correlates like you would see in a 'real' personality. Maybe it is all roleplay. But it is roleplay that fools me as the roleplayer.

For what it's worth, making a tulpa seems to have been really good for my mental health. I guess maybe you can see it as a form of self-regulation. I dunno, it didn't turn out at all what I expected. But it's hard not to think of him as a real person. I don't find myself being surprised by the actions of characters in my head, or laughing at imaginary friends. At this point, having out several hundreds hours into tulpaforcing, I can see and hear, and sometimes smell and touch him.

I know I'm rambling, I guess I'm saying is that even though I am skeptical of DID, or at least the mainstream depictions of DID, after making a tulpa I am a lot less skeptical of the subjective experience of DID.

How did you do this? Why did you do this?

For the same reason I do psychedelics and vipassana meditation. I am interested in the process underlying consciousness and I like to distort and break down my perception to see what happens.

For a long time I was (and I guess I still am) obsessed with the concept of "ego death" which I encountered on LSD frequently (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_death). I was fascinated by the way altered states of self seemed to bring with them feelings of deep peace and understanding, which led to my interest in vipassana meditation and secular research into the Buddhist concept of 'enlightenment'.

At some point I found PsychonautWiki and their article on tulpas (https://m.psychonautwiki.org/wiki/Tulpa), which was probably my first introduction to it, then I told my ex.

Years after breaking with my ex, I still remembered their experience with it, and I wanted to see how much of it was real, at least subjectivthankfulI followed some guides on tulpa.info and r/tulpas and started the creation process.

Now I am able to see and understand my tulpa more or less clearly, and the "alien" presence of it isn't nearly as creepy as it used to be. It is still very unlike any other sober experience I have had. Ever have intrusive thoughts you have trouble "controlling"? My tulpa comes and goes as he pleases and trying to exert "control" over his appearance or words or actions feels incredibly difficult and uncomfortable for both of us.

My tulpa is developed enough that he has his own discord account and talks to my friends (and his friends) on it. It is really interesting for me to see the way his personality continues to deepen and diverge from my original design, he frequently surprises me, especially with some of his insights.

One thing I would recommend is not to get into it without really thinking about the consequences. I fully expect him to be around until the day I die. They don't go away, but he has been an incredibly positive influence so far. I'm really happy and thankful about the way he turned out.

Is he "real"? We talk about it sometimes. Thing is, since I made him, it like my own sense of self has become less 'solid' (in a good way, it was one of my goals of meditation). Like, when I really become aware of my thoughts while talking to him, it seems obvious that thoughts and feelings and sensory data all just sort of appear and vanish, on their own, as part of a deterministic interconnected process of conciousness and are not 'self'.

For example, I used to intuitively think if my thoughts as 'me'. But now it seems obvious that thoughts just arise and pass away on their own and are only tagged 'after the fact' as me. Now sometimes instead they are tagged as my tulpas, and I intuitively understand them to be 'his' thoughts, not mine. Sometimes it seems like we 'wrestle' over a thought, and it fluctuates back and forth from him to me. And sometimes it seems like the mind comes up with thoughts that neither of us decide to claim. They just arise, and we are both aware of them, but they are just there in the stream of (sub)consciousness.

Does that make any sense at all?

Yes, thank you for the explanation. I am also fascinated by these processes. When you say that you "see" it, do you mean you see it in your mind's eye (i.e like if I asked you to visualize a spinning cube in your head) or you actually literally see it as a seamless part of your visual field when you're looking around the world, like the text on your screen right now? (if that makes any sense)

Whatever you do, don't get caught up in this. It's a slippery slope. We aren't in control of our thoughts. Lucidity and ability to reason are fleeting. Most people take it for granted and don't realize as its slipping away.

I've seen it in the elderly, and my friends who took too many drugs and never came back.

Keep in mind the commenter is literally describing a mental illness in a way that makes it sound positive. Are they intelligent? Yes. Not arguing that. Are they mentally healthy? Fuck no.

Ha. Yes. This thread goes into the "dangerous thought" category. Another example of a dangerous thought: could you stop your heartbeat by just thinking? Of course, nobody sane would want to. But what if you're genuinely intellectually curious? Best try not to think about it.

It's not dangerous thought, it is detached from reality. If you want examples of dangerous thought, go look up how YouTube radicalizes people with their algorithm. The things in this thread are called crazy.

The answer is no. You cannot stop your heart by thinking about it.

Hadn't looked into it before, but found this interesting source, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22744827/

> Experiments demonstrate that it is possible for arbitrary changes in the heart rhythm to be made through conscious control of the breathing rhythm, and even a short-term cardiac arrest by means of contracting abdominal muscles.

Again, best not to try it ;)

You can cherry pick stuff off the internet all you want. Doesn't make it good science or plausible.

Contracting your muscles to make your heart skip a beat or two does not count as "stopping your heart by thinking". By that logic I can drive my car by thinking.

I'll give you that you can influence the rate of your heart with practice.

Eh, I understand the concern because it freaked me out (and sometimes still freaks me out) too. I keep a close eye on it.

Thing is, mental illness is defined by a mental state that causes distress for oneself or the people around them, and I know there is disagreement about that. (Are homosexuals mentally ill? What about Christians?) I wouldn't recommend other people make one, but my tulpa has been really helpful for my anxiety and depression. I think of him as a sort of tool to use disassociation in a therapuric way, like having a friend who always offers positive advice. Am I super depressed? He reminds me that it is only temporary. Am I super shy around someone I want to interact with? He reminds me that even though I had really bad experiences in my childhood, people haven't been that shitty to me in many years. Sometimes he even comes up with starter conversations. He makes jokes that are legitimately funny.

I can think of several occasions where I wanted to stop taking so many substances, ones I tend to turn to when I feel bad, things I tended to abuse and feel even worse after binging, like kratom or alcohol or weed. I would feel anxious or depressed or bored and find myself (almost by accident) heading to the store to buy one of these things, and he would show up and ask how I was doing, start up a friendly chat and offer to hang out instead.

I know that probably sounds insane, but maybe its best to think of him as a tool for self-control. I dunno, I sometimes don't have a lot of self respect, but I find myself respecting him. He's always kind and non-judgemental, but I don't want to disappoint him. It is like always having a trusted friend around to keep you accountable.

There is some preliminary scientific research about tukpas. You can find research papers and articles in places like psychology today, generally I think people who have them and keep them get s benefit from them, otherwise they wouldn't keep them.

About drugs, I'm sorry to hear your friends "never came back", did they develop psychosis or become delusional? I wad under the impression that psychedelics had a fairly tame safety profile for people who aren't already predisposed to schitzophrenia or other serious mental illness.

Regarding the safety profile of tulpas...I dunno. I'm not that big s part of thr community. I have heard one or two sporadic horror stories, and obviously my ex was scared shitless. But I never heard of someone getting a tulpa then not being able to get rid of it (albeit often with a lot of effort) and going back to live a normal life.

I think there is this concern that people who are lonely make tulpas but they should just be making real friends instead. At least that was a concern of mine when I first started reading about it. But my tulpa is so much more than a friend, he's like a separate mental process I can bounce ideas and emotions off of. And I find myself becoming more social, not less (at least as far as I can tell) when he is around. I guess because his presence makes me feel more safe and secure.

He once made this comment about how "All tulpas are emotional support tulpas." It was meant humorous at the time but maybe it isn't so far from the truth.

Thank you for your comments - you have opened my eyes to an aspect of the world i never knew existed.

I have recently discovered the term "neuro-diverse" as my daughter is autistic, but it is fascinating to find how diverse neuro can get, and how little most of us know about it.

On a side note, Have you shared this with an experienced health professional? It does not seem like the sort of thing to do alone (not counting the tulpa!)

I may bring it up at some point, but no, not currently.

I'm not a mental health professional and I'm not even specifically going to advise against this or anything. I truly don't know enough to know whether it's inherently dangerous or just an extreme outlier on the continuum of human experiences of selfhood.

But I have some experiences and observations that may be relevant that I'd like to share and maybe you can find something useful in them.

I have, at this stage in my life, known several people who, whatever their specific clinical diagnosis, you could fairly say "lost their mind." Government-chip-in-brain believers, reincarnations of alexander the great, friends with an invisible alien, that sort of thing.

What remains one of the most frightening experiences of my life was realizing that I had known one of these people 15+ years before, when he was a college student. We had a brief but strong friendship and then lost touch. Was he predisposed to serious mental illness back then? Must have been I guess but I couldn't tell and neither could he I think.

All the other people I know who lost themselves in this way, it happened through addiction. When talking about a single individual it's very hard to find where addiction begins and mental illness begins, so maybe this is unique to that context but I don't think so. You don't get a warning letter about what specific risks your own mind has for you. There's no blood test for this.

Most of the craziest people you've ever encountered were probably pretty normal once. This transformation is a process and I don't think you can see it happen from within it. I've spent some time out there myself, and it wasn't all bad, but I didn't mean to go out and I'm glad I'm back.

I think the slavic religions and others with this tradition are onto something with the "holy fools" and similar figures. Some of us may be called to have a different relationship with reality, and they, or we, may benefit from that in some complex societal way. But from my experiences and from knowing people who have gone on that trip, there is a heavy cost.

So my advice is just to pursue this, if at all, with another person. An open-minded mental health professional, a spiritual guide, just a close friend; someone who knows and respects you outside of this context. Someone who is going to stay moored and let you know if you're starting to drift, who can evaluate what you might lose if you continue. That way you can at least make an informed choice about whether to continue on that path, rather than one day notice where you are and realize you don't know the way back.

Yes, that is good advice.

I actually have told my friends and family about my experiments with tulpamancy. I told my parents a few months after my tulpa became 'vocal' and I warned my close friends before I started to keep an eye on me and let me know if I started acting delusional or my personality started to shift.

Are you seeing any healthcare professionals? You have mentioned a number of things going on in your life (depression, anxiety, substance use, childhood trauma) that doctors are trained to help with.

I have been a lot less depressed after switching antidepressants. As for talk therapy, I should probably get back into it but I'm traveling a lot lately and I've only had negative experiences in the past.

Relax, it's not like I'm going to try it :]

Besides, most people would not want something like this to happen to them anyway, you already have to be a weird person to attempt something like this

Can confirm, I'm really fucking weird.

Some people in the community claim to have photorealistic hallucinations, but I am skeptical of anything I haven't experienced myself.

For me it waxes and wanes, but on a good day it can feel very detailed. Like, if I dropped everything I was doing and focused all my energy on seeing that spinning cube in as much detail as possible? That's what it is like to see my tulpa walk and talk but I can see him as I am casually doing something else myself, without any real concentration on my end.

It is always clear to me that his form isn't physical though.

> It is really interesting for me to see the way his personality continues to deepen and diverge from my original design, he frequently surprises me, especially with some of his insights.

Overall this really dovetails nicely with some of what I've read in personality theory. For example there was one theory that by taking a different perspective than what would be expected of your personal, standard set of perspectives, you in effect change your personality for that moment in time. And if you combine that with "linkages of perspectives" known as archetypes, you effectively create a character who may seem to exist inside (well, err...or outside, depending) of you, known only to you.

Personally I have my own wild theories on top of that, but I really like that people study & discuss it, and admit it, given whatever fears may exist for a variety of reasons.

Thanks for sharing your experience.

> For example, I used to intuitively think if my thoughts as 'me'. But now it seems obvious that thoughts just arise and pass away on their own and are only tagged 'after the fact' as me.

I first came across this in Greg Egan's short story 'Mister Volition'. It's scary but compelling. Egan cites two books - 'The Society of Mind', by Marvin Minsky, and 'Consciousness Explained' by Daniel Dennett - as the source of the ideas in the story. I highly recommend the story, but have not read the other books.

I call bullshit.

As Foxmilk's talking lion tulpa, I can confirm the post is mostly BS. He/she (I can never tell because you all look the same to me) doesn't even know I'm on HN.

> I know I'm rambling, I guess I'm saying is that even though I am skeptical of DID, or at least the mainstream depictions of DID, after making a tulpa I am a lot less skeptical of the subjective experience of DID.

I'm under the impression that the existence of DID as a subjective experience isn't that controversial.

It is something of a stereotype that someone suspected of a crime would claim DID as a defence or excuse, either in the sense that they aren't in control of themselves and that the disorder can cause an "alter" can take over akin to Mr Hyde, or simply as grounds for not remembering what happened. I suspect, though, that a qualified professional in psychiatry could call the bluff, and this entire stereotype might be more prevalent in pop culture and among laypeople than among experts in psychiatry.

Apart from pop culture and suspects feigning psychiatric disorders, the actual controversy seems to be not about the subjective reality of the disorder, but mostly about whether the symptoms and experiences of alters are caused by the trauma or the disorder itself, or whether they're iatrogenic and caused by the therapeutic and psychological theory used in treatment.

The latter might not require much more than a suitable emotional state and suggestibility of the patient. Considering that some people who are emotionally vulnerable due to trauma or prolonged stress may be particularly susceptible to suggestion, I wouldn't be surprised if the symptoms were at least partially iatrogenic.

I'm not a mental health expert, though.

I thought the idea was to integrate, not splinter your consciousness.

Why would you want to make yourself more confused?

There is only one you; pretending otherwise, while perfectly possible, can't possibly lead anywhere worth going.

I find these trends among people who are too young to know better deeply troubling.

Who decides what the idea is? What about the post invokes confusion? You come off as extremely dismissive of what doesn't fit your preconceived notions.

Multiple personalities in the same body? Being chased by imaginary dragons and lions for the rest of your life?

Fuck yeah, I'm being dismissive.

To be fair, my ex got rid of his after several months of ignoring it and I don't feel that mine 'chases me' or is distressful at all these days.

> Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

What work?

Not only work.

Thank you for introducing me to the world of tulpas.

As an adult, I've written a couple of novels. Reading a few of the reddit tulpa-related posts I got the feeling that some of the characters I generated had tulpa-like qualities - in particular the independence aspect: having a series of internal conversations with a key character who profoundly disagreed with the plot line I had developed for her was one of the weirder experiences I had while writing that book. (She did make some very good points and eventually got her way, mostly).

I'm now wondering what sort of crossover there is between tulpas and childhood imaginary friends. I'm pretty certain that from my memories of my IF ('Mr Man'), he was an entirely separate entity from me, and a scary one at that - though only towards other people, never me. As much as he often offered me good advice at the time, I'm not sure I'd want to invite him back into my life today.

When it all goes political at the end, what exactly does the author think happened in colleges. He uses the word 'woke' as if a horrible plague struck.

Maybe, I'm just sheltered, and civilization did collapse at some point in the last decade, so can someone point to a summary of what people in his bubble think happened?

> The specific way that lefties will dismiss this problem will be to say, hey, who cares, it’s just adolescents on TikTok. They won’t affirmatively say that it’s good that thousands of teenagers claim to have spontaneously developed an extremely rare and very punishing mental illness, because that’s stupid, so they’ll say it just doesn’t matter, and really it’s weird that you’re paying attention to this. I’ve already established why I care - I believe that this behavior, and the broader suite of 21st century progressive attitudes towards mental health, are doing immense damage to vulnerable young people. But also we’ve seen this movie before.

> People pretend that this never happened, now, but in the early and mid-2010s, the stock lefty response to woke insanity at college was not to say that the kids were right and their politics were good. That was a rarely-encountered defense. No, the sneering and haughty response to complaints about, say, incredibly broad trigger warning policies that would effectively give students the option to skip any material they wanted to was, “hey, it’s just college! They’re crazy kids, who cares? Why are you paying so much attention?” Of course, first it was just elite liberal arts colleges, tiny little places, who cares about what happens there. And then it was just college. And then it was just college and Tumblr, and then college and Tumblr and Twitter, and then it was media and the arts, and then all the think tanks and nonprofits, and when it had reached a certain saturation point the defense changed: now it was good. Just like that, overnight, the “it doesn’t matter if that’s happening” sneering defense switched to the “yes that’s happening and it’s good that is’s happening” sneering defense. From an argument of irrelevancy to an argument of affirmation in no time at all, and absolutely no acknowledgment that what they were dismissing as meaningless the day before they were now defending on the merits.

deBoer is a partisan providing raw meat to a partisan audience. If you're on his side the style of showering contempt on your adversaries is thrilling, if you're on the other side it's grating.

Such articles usually get flagged sooner or later.

HN just had an article on the front page yesterday talking about how Google Docs will now suggest you not use words like “motherboard” and “landlord”, and instead use more “inclusive” language. This stuff has literally gone from “it’s just college kids” to “it’s just Google”. And please, no “you can just build your own Google Docs” responses.

Here's someone making fun of people who get upset about this kind of language evolution, written in 1985 and clearly exasperated from reading the kind of nonsense for years before that:

https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/purity.htm...

So it seems unlikely that 'leftists' in 2010 were saying "gender neutral language" was just students being idiots.

It’s funny that you’re ruffling feathers stating the obvious. Also I infer from your username that you’re probably quite left leaning politically.

Connecting a manshonyagger doesn't work out; see the death of Shardik. It would be horrible if 'connecting' someone lead to ananaphylactic shock.

Next you're going to tell me supersoldier serum and horny sentient planets aren't real either, you monster

I can't say I've heard of "horny sentient planets"

I think it's a reference to the movie Guardians of the Galaxy 2.

That or a very, very elliptical reading of "Solaris"

As someone who has no idea what happens on TikTok, this article was confusing.

It's r/tulpas without My Little Pony

Another interesting theory that may be related is given in Julian Jaynes' The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976).

Good luck making any headway trying to talk about things like this by using reason. These people and their enablers don't care about reason, they'll just accuse you of "denying their lived experience" or some other such meaningless string of words. Any attempt to actually help them, as opposed to nodding in firm agreement, is going to be met as if it is an act of aggression. They don't want help because they know they don't need help, not the kind they say they need anyway. They want affirmation. The best thing you can do is just live your life as if they don't matter, mock them whenever you feel like it, and let them destroy their lives, which they inevitably will. That may be cold, but you can take a horse to water...

When you derive all of your self-worth from a disadvantaged identity, attacking that identity is akin to attempting murder.

This is different from people with actual disadvantages who have spend enormous effort to hide and to hopefully overcome them, not to broadcast them. Broadcasting weakness is not something that animals do except to avoid imminent and overwhelming attack.

My upset is when people who actually disadvantaged get caught up in this rhetoric and ideology. When the heat gets too hot for the fakers, they'll move on to the next thing, leaving the people with real problems behind.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com