Multiple Personality Disorder Quotes

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

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

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

“Denial is commonly found among persons with dissociative disorders. My favorite quotation from such a client is, "We are not multiple, we made it all up." I have heard this from several different clients. When I hear it, I politely inquire, "And who is we?”
― Alison Miller, Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control

“At cocktail parties, I played the part of a successful businessman's wife to perfection. I smiled, I made polite chit-chat, and I dressed the part. Denial and rationalization were two of my most effective tools in working my way through our social obligations. I believed that playing the roles of wife and mother were the least I could do to help support Tom's career.
During the day, I was a puzzle with innumerable pieces. One piece made my family a nourishing breakfast. Another piece ferried the kids to school and to soccer practice. A third piece managed to trip to the grocery store. There was also a piece that wanted to sleep for eighteen hours a day and the piece that woke up shaking from yet another nightmare. And there was the piece that attended business functions and actually fooled people into thinking I might have something constructive to offer.
I was a circus performer traversing the tightwire, and I could fall off into a vortex devoid of reality at any moment. There was, and had been for a very long time, an intense sense of despair. A self-deprecating voice inside told me I had no chance of getting better. I lived in an emotional black hole.
p20-21, talking about dissociative identity disorder (formerly multiple personality disorder).”
― Suzie Burke, Wholeness: My Healing Journey from Ritual Abuse

“Why did I allow the abuse to continue? Even as a teenager?
I didn’t.
Something that had been plaguing me for years now made sense. It was like the answer to a terrible secret. The thing is, it wasn’t me in my bed, it was Shirley who lay the wondering if that man was going to come to her room, pull back the cover and push his penis into her waiting mouth it was Shirley. I remembered watching her, a skinny little thing with no breasts and a dark resentful expression. She was angry. She didn’t want this man in her room doing the things he did, but she didn’t know how to stop it. He didn’t beat her, he didn’t threaten her. He just looked at her with black hypnotic eyes and she lay back with her legs apart thinking about nothing at all.
And where was I? I stood to one side, or hovered overhead just below the ceiling, or rode on a magic carpet. I held my breath and watched my father pushing up and down inside Shirley’s skinny body.”
― Alice Jamieson, Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind

“Some people with DID present their narratives of sadistic abuse in a quite matter-of-fact way, without perceptible affect. This may sometimes be done as a way of protecting themselves, and the listener, from the emotional impact of their experience. We have found that people describing trauma in a flat way, without feeling, are usually those who have been more chronically abused, while those with affect still have a sense of self that can observe the tragedy of betrayal and have feelings about it. In some cases, this deadpan presentation can also be the result of cult training and brainwashing. Unfortunately, when a patient describes a traumatic experience without showing any apparent emotion, it can make the listener doubt whether the patient is telling the truth.
(page 119, Chapter 9, Some clinical implications of believing or not believing the patient)”
― Graeme Galton, Forensic Aspects of Dissociative Identity Disorder

“Dissociation, in a general sense, refers to a rigid separation of parts of experiences, including somatic experiences, consciousness, affects, perception, identity, and memory. When there is a structural dissociation, each of the dissociated self-states has at least a rudimentary sense of "I" (Van der Hart et al., 2004). In my view, all of the environmentally based "psychopathology" or problems in living can be seen through this lens.”
― Elizabeth F. Howell, The Dissociative Mind

“After writing the letter Sybil lost almost two days. "Coming to," she stumbled across what she had written just before she had dissociated and wrote to Dr. Wilbur as follows: It's just so hard to have to feel, believe, and admit that I do not have conscious control over my selves. It is so much more threatening to have something out of hand than to believe that at any moment I can stop (I started to say "This foolishness") any time I need to. When I wrote the previous letter, I had made up my mind I would show you how I could be very composed and cool and not need to ask you to listen to me nor to explain anything to me nor need any help. By telling you that all this about the multiple personalities was not really true I could show, or so I thought, that I did not need you. Well, it would be easier if it were put on. But the only ruse of which I'm guilty is to have pretended for so long before coming to you that nothing was wrong. Pretending that the personalities did not exist has now caused me to lose about two days.”
― Flora Rheta Schreiber, Sybil: The Classic True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Personalities

“Having DID is, for many people, a very lonely thing. If this book reaches some people whose experiences resonate with mine and gives them a sense that they aren't alone, that there is hope, then I will have achieved one of my goals.
A sad fact is that people with DID spend an average of almost seven years in the mental health system before being properly diagnosed and receiving the specific help they need. During that repeatedly misdiagnosed and incorrectly treated, simply because clinicians fail to recognize the symptoms. If this book provides practicing and future clinicians certain insight into DID, then I will have accomplished another goal.
Clinicians, and all others whose lives are touched by DID, need to grasp the fundamentally illusive nature of memory, because memory, or the lack of it, is an integral component of this condition. Our minds are stock pots which are continuously fed ingredients from many cooks: parents, siblings, relatives, neighbors, teachers, schoolmates, strangers, acquaintances, radio, television, movies, and books. These are the fixings of learning and memory, which are stirred with a spoon that changes form over time as it is shaped by our experiences. In this incredibly amorphous neurological stew, it is impossible for all memories to be exact.
But even as we accept the complex of impressionistic nature of memory, it is equally essential to recognize that people who experience persistent and intrusive memories that disrupt their sense of well-being and ability to function, have some real basis distress, regardless of the degree of clarity or feasibility of their recollections.
We must understand that those who experience abuse as children, and particularly those who experience incest, almost invariably suffer from a profound sense of guilt and shame that is not meliorated merely by unearthing memories or focusing on the content of traumatic material. It is not enough to just remember. Nor is achieving a sense of wholeness and peace necessarily accomplished by either placing blame on others or by forgiving those we perceive as having wronged us. It is achieved through understanding, acceptance, and reinvention of the self.”
― Cameron West, First Person Plural: My Life as a Multiple

“Well, it would have been easier if it were put on. But the only ruse of which I'm guilty is to have pretended for so long before coming to you that nothing was wrong. Pretending that the personalities did not exist has now caused me to lose about two days.”
― Flora Rheta Schreiber, Sybil: The Classic True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Personalities

“Janna knew - Rikki knew — and I knew, too — that becoming Dr Cameron West wouldn't make me feel a damn bit better about myself than I did about being Citizen West. Citizen West, Citizen Kane, Sugar Ray Robinson, Robinson Crusoe, Robinson miso, miso soup, black bean soup, black sticky soup, black sticky me. Yeah. Inside I was still a fetid and festering corpse covered in sticky blackness, still mired in putrid shame and scorching self-hatred. I could write an 86-page essay comparing the features of Borderline Personality Disorder with those of Dissociative Identity Disorder, but I barely knew what day it was, or even what month, never knew where the car was parked when Dusty would come out of the grocery store, couldn't look in the mirror for fear of what—or whom—I'd see.
~ Dr Cameron West describes living with DID whilst studying to be a psychologist.”
― Cameron West, First Person Plural: My Life as a Multiple

“Somehow the disorder hooks into all kinds of fears and insecurities in many clinicians. The flamboyance of the multiple, her intelligence and ability to conceptualize the disorder, coupled with suicidal impulses of various orders of seriousness, all seem to mask for many therapists the underlying pain, dependency, and need that are very much part of the process. In many ways, a professional dealing with a multiple in crisis is in the same position as a parent dealing with a two-year-old or with an adolescent's acting-out behavior. (236)”
― Lynn I. Wilson, The Flock: The Autobiography of a Multiple Personality

“Some alters are what Dr Ross describes in Multiple Personality Disorder as 'fragments'. which are 'relatively limited psychic states that express only one feeling, hold one memory, or carry out a limited task in the person's life. A fragment might be a frightened child who holds the memory of one particular abuse incident.' In complex multiples, Dr Ross continues, the 'personalities are relatively full-bodied, complete states capable of a range of emotions and behaviours.' The alters will have 'executive control some substantial amount of time over the person's life'. He stresses, and I repeat his emphasis, 'Complex MPD with over 15 alter personalities and complicated amnesia barriers are associated with 100 percent frequency of childhood physical, sexual and emotional abuse.' Did I imagine the castle, the dungeon, the ritual orgies and violations? Did Lucy, Billy, Samuel, Eliza, Shirley and Kato make it all up? I went back to the industrial estate and found the castle. It was an old factory that had burned to the ground, but the charred ruins of the basement remained. I closed my eyes and could see the black candles, the dancing shadows, the inverted pentagram, the people chanting through hooded robes. I could see myself among other children being abused in ways that defy imagination. I have no doubt now that the cult of devil worshippers was nothing more than a ring of paedophiles, the satanic paraphernalia a cover for their true lusts: the innocent bodies of young children.”
― Alice Jamieson, Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind

“Patrice had long since buried the particulars of events so painful that they caused her to resolve only to see good. With such a stance, such as dissociative split, she could walk with evil and believe it did not exist. She was Joe's perfect mate.”
― Judith Spencer, Satan's High Priest

“Treating Abuse Today 3(4) pp. 26-33
Freyd: The term "multiple personality" itself assumes that there is "single personality" and there is evidence that no one ever displays a single personality.

TAT: The issue here is the extent of dissociation and amnesia and the extent to which these fragmentary aspects of personality can take executive control and control function. Sure, you and I have different parts to our mind, there's no doubt about that, but I don't lose time to mine they can't come out in the middle of a lecture and start acting 7 years old. I'm very much in the camp that says that we all are multi-minds, but the difference between you and me and a multiple is pretty tangible.

Freyd: Those are clearly interesting questions, but that area and the clinical aspects of dissociation and multiple personalities is beyond anything the Foundation is actively...

TAT: That's a real problem. Let me tell you why that's a problem. Many of the people that have been alleged to have "false memory syndrome" have diagnosed dissociative disorders. It seems to me the fact that you don't talk about dissociative disorders is a little dishonest, since many people whose lives have been impacted by this movement are MPD or have a dissociative disorder. To say, "Well, we ONLY know about repression but not about dissociation or multiple personalities" seems irresponsible.

Freyd: Be that as it may, some of the scientific issues with memory are clear. So if we can just stick with some things for a moment; one is that memories are reconstructed and reinterpreted no matter how long ago or recent.

TAT: You weigh the recollected testimony of an alleged perpetrator more than the alleged victim's. You're saying, basically, if the parents deny it, that's another notch for disbelief.

Freyd: If it's denied, certainly one would want to check things. It would have to be one of many factors that are weighed -- and that's the problem with these issues -- they are not black and white, they're very complicated issues.”
― David L. Calof

“I was shocked and terrified to hear Dr. Summer say I had what was formerly known as multiple personality disorder. Is that like Sybil? Am I like the woman in The Three Faces of Eve? My head began to spin. What do I have inside of me? Is there a crazy person in there? What am I? I felt like a freak. I was afraid to have anyone know. I have a mental illness. People make fun of people like me. Upon hearing my diagnosis, I stopped thinking of myself as smart, creative, or clever. Even though Dr. Summer had worked hard to help me understand that I had developed an amazingly adaptive survival technique, I no longer thought of it that way at all.

I was overwhelmed by fear and shame. The words multiple personality disorder echoed in my mind. I thought of all the ways people with multiple personalities were ridiculed and marginalized: They're locked away in mental institutions. They are really sick. I'm not going to be the subject of people's jokes. I am a lawyer. I work at the U.S. Department of Justice. The more I thought about it, the deeper my despair grew.”
― Olga Trujillo, The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder

“The widespread agreement among mental-healfh professionals about DID's symptoms, the near uniformity of its roots in childhood trauma, and the positive response of patients to therapy30 all support the existence of DID as a diagnosable and treatable mental disorder.31 Despite questions raised by skeptics about the diagnosis of individual cases,32 DID's general acceptance rate among mental-healfh professionals is at least eighty percent.33”
― Mary E Grego

“Skeptics of DID have generally not seen a real multiple, probably because alters, having been created by abuse, do not readily reveal themselves to practioners who are unwilling to accept their reality.”
― John G. Watkins

“We used to be a nation of shopkeepers. Now we are a nation of second hand shops.”
― Clifford Thurlow, Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind

“Memories are, by their nature, false, in as much as they construct pictures and narratives of the person who once was, with those cells which once were, but are no more. Those cells have mutated and turned into something else. Everything that is always has been and always will be. The dust in the light shaft beaming through the windows carries the dead cells off dinosaurs and the ashes of grandpa.”
― Alice Jamieson, Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind

“The horizon is 25 miles away. You keep walking to towards the horizon and it just keeps moving back. Life is like that. You never reach your goal. We are doomed to disappointment because in our pursuit of perfection we are constantly reminded that we will never reach it. The goal, like the horizon, is beyond our reach.”
― Clifford Thurlow, Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind

“The horizon is 25 miles away. You keep walking towards the horizon and it just keeps moving back. Life is like that. We are doomed to disappointment because in our pursuit of perfection we are constantly reminded that we will never reach it. The goal, like the horizon, is beyond our reach.”
― Clifford Thurlow, Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind

“When friends say we'll see you again soon, keep in touch, it means you will never see them again. Friendship is like fire. You have to keep feeding it or the fires goes out.”
― Clifford Thurlow, Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind

“When friends say we'll see you again soon, keep in touch, it means you will never see them again. Friendship is like fire. You have to keep feeding it or the fire goes out.”
― Clifford Thurlow, Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind

“DID is misrepresented in the ICD-10 as a rare disorder. The prevalence of DID found in community samples was between 0.4% (Akyuz, Dogan, Sar, Yargic, & Tutkun, 1999) and 1.5% (Johnson, Cohen, Kasen, & Brook, 2006), whereas its prevalence in psychiatric samples falls in the range of 1 % (Rifkin, Ghisalbert, Dimatou, Jin, & Sethi, 1998), and 2% (Friedl & Draijer, 2000), to 5.4% (Tutkun et al., 1998) and 6% (Foote et al., 2006). One North American study found a prevalence of 12% (Latz, Kramer, & Hughes, 1995). Although the latter finding is exceptional and possibly due to site-specific ascertainment biases, it seems safe to conclude that the prevalence of the disorder is probably at least as high as that of schizophrenia, which is not a rare disorder.”
― Paul H. Blaney, Oxford Textbook of Psychopathology

“I have some very interesting results from the tests we performed; results that I, quite frankly, didn’t expect.” The doctor removed his glasses and looked directly at my mother. “It appears that your son has dissociative identity disorder.” Seeing her blank expression he added, “It used to be known as multiple personality disorder.”
― John Mondragon, The Clash Inside Me

“Our psyche is astonishingly fissile. The proof is our dreams where one psyche produces a whole cast of characters interacting with each other and trying to dominate each other. All dreams are examples of multiple personality disorder, with the dream characters serving as “alters” of the unconscious mind. When a person, during waking hours, cannot control their unconscious, their dream minds take over as a cast of alters and they are then diagnosed with dissociate identity disorder.”
― Rob Armstrong, Homo Roboticus: The Inner Human Robot Revealed By Sleepwalking and Hypnosis

“I could be whatever they wanted me to be. A fun girl, a potential best friend, someone to tell secrets to over midnight snacks. This type of socializing was just me playing little roles for a few moments, but when I need to go all in, I can.”
― Vera Kurian, Never Saw Me Coming

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

“A rare and fascinating journey into the origin and turmoil of living with MPD - a candid, often harrowing account of the enduring power of the human spirit. Sometimes shocking, often enlighting, always compelling.”
― Michelle Tom, Ten Thousand Aftershocks

“Seven types of child abuse contributing to MPD and dissociation may be identified, although the types are usually mixed (e.g., collateral physical, sexual, and psychological abuse):
1) severe neglect, physical and psychological;
2) physical abuse, often by family members;
3) sexual and physical abuse, not incestuous;
4) sexual abuse, incestuous;
5) physical abuse and presumed sexual abuse;
6) sexual abuse, pornography, incest; and
7) ritual, satanic abuse, family members often involved.”
― Bennett G. Braun, Incest-Related Syndromes of Adult Psychopathology