Engaging Multiple Personalities

The general public is bewildered and fascinated by Multiple Personality Disorder/Dissociative Identity Disorder. Through books, television and movies, a distorted view of DID is often presented. While it may make for good entertainment, it fails to truly present the depth and intensity of the inherent trauma. Outside the ordinary day-to-day life experience of most people, it is hard to understand. This book is directed toward patients, support networks and therapists who wish to learn about treating DID from a clinician's perspective. Ignoring past trauma simply will not help a patient. In his psychiatric practice, the author encountered a number of his patients' alters face-to-face. He found that the most effective course of therapy was to engage them directly. Talking to alters is a strange, serious and ultimately compelling experience. They are not real according to our customary definitions, but neither are they false or fake. They cannot get a passport but they concretely function in the patient's inner and outer world. They are survivors of childhood abuse, present in shared flesh and blood. They are essential for healing the patient. The author discusses the phenomenon of DID through case histories, and how it manifests clinically. Most important, he elucidates through these case histories practical and easily accessible techniques necessary to help these traumatized patients heal. DID patients can successfully engage in and profit from therapy. By processing the impact of their past traumatic memory, they may reclaim their present.