Septimus,
Thanks for your post. I don’t think the article Moreno cites completely negates your take on this matter.
Moreno,
Appreciated the article. Here’s my “however”. To prevent harm to self and others some intervention becomes necessary. Drugs are the closest we’ve got so far to addressing these problems. While I agree about the Americanizational influence on how to see MIs as it affects other cultures’ attitudes and folk wisdom, I must recognize that there are some standards of criteria that are necessary to consider before anything can be done. I don’t believe we in America are totally without these. Perspectivism is nice, liberal and holistic; but, it does not get down to the real matter of what can we do, here and now, to help the mentally ill regain self-esteem, which appears to be square one of recovery.
Liz,
If J. has multiple personalities, she is not schizophenic. D.I.D. (google multiple personality disorder) for this current diagnostic term) is not shown on MRIs to include brain damage. Schizophrenia does show brain damage. The problem I’m getting into at this stage of learning is finding that most of the severe forms of psychosis have identical symptoms. Lack of her family’s consideration of me as someone willing to help, I can only listen to what J. says. She claims 14 personalities. I’ve seen three distinct ones. One is a child, very innocent. One is a fundy evangelist. One uses words the other two wouldn’t consider using.
J. had mentioned “schizophrenia” as something someone told her. Her constant thirst and need for “booster” shots to maintain some sort of stability seem to indicate schizophrenia. Her different personalities do not.
I see from the two persons who have joined our discussion that the social context is very important in determining how we think and what we do with sufferers of MIs as well as being influential in how MI sufferers see themselves. While these ideas may interest those of us who enjoy some sort of “standardized” normalcy, they do little or nothing to inform us about what we ought to be doing to address the here and now problems.
The point of the article is that thinking of these people as MI and treating them within the whole psychiatric pharmacological models seems NOT to work as well. This might indicate that their standards of criteria are better.
Back in the late 50s early 60s white suburban women were beind medicated in extremely high numbers. It was inconceivable to the medical community that there was anything they could have a problem with on a general level, so individual women were pathologized. A look at Mad Men might give a useful perspective to what might have been depressing these women.
It is in the pharmacological industry’s interests for us to view people as individuals that are broken - they have bad DNA, they have a disease.
Humans spend billions of dollars medicating themselves via these companies, rather than actually dealing with the sources of their problems, many of them societal.
It is like doctors giving every patient pain killers and sending them home.
That is our current approach to suffering.
And so a primary feedback loop from citizens is being cut off.
It is not a society for the people, clearly. It is the opposite.
But actually they do. One could for example integrate the way families deal with people who would be diagnosed over here in our own interpersonal practices.
There is also a whole wealth of approaches to dealing with people with DID who have tended to have undergone incredible abuse. They are not ill. If I hit your arm and it bruises, the bruise is not an illness. DID is what happens to brains/minds when they have underone traumatic stress, generally for long periods of time.
The medical model will view their brains as abnormal and suggest medication, as if the person has a genetic or other disease. This is philosophically idiotic.
(note: I am not saying medication cannot help in certain cases/situations, but the current model is philosophically weak and scientifically naive.)
Moreno,
I concede on your points well taken. I admit that the neuroscience/reductionist model, coupled with psychology is naive, or at best inadequate.
My concern is where do we go from here?
I admit that schizophrenia is a personality disorder. As such, it involves not only brain chemical malfunction, but also a lifetime of interface between self and culture, self and society and self and family. Culture evolves over centuries and offers little hope of immediate change. Society is primarily concerned with its own preservation, not with that of individuals whocannot contribute to it. Family is torn between hope and despair over the quick fixes or lengthy therapy currently offered. Self is the victim.
i dont think schizophrenia is a personality disorder…
Wait, I haven’t said that I hope.
I’m not going to go to Wiki to get an ‘accepted’ definition of ‘multiple personality disorder.’ I think schizophrenia and MPD co-exist, because that’s the way some people present their MI. In either case, the ‘monad,’ the oneness of the self, has disintegrated. Reintegrating the ‘self’ can’t always be done, if the compartmentalizing of ‘feeling’ is too strong. On the other hand it might be understood and accepted–even played with by the patient. “Get out of my mind, Josie, you’re nothing more that a fear I may never understand, but I don’t need you any more for protection.”
At least, that’s how I look at multiple personalities.
Turtle, Moreno Liz, et.al.,
Turtle you are right in that current literature does not describe schizophrenia as split personality but as a schism in ability to communicate on a rational basis with others. “Personality” may be the wrong word. Let me clarify with a living example. Below is a message J. wrote on the morning of 8/3/11.
“enternal (SIC),
my own left for years in a dream. Over try everyone dies if taken in (the) spirit fond of God every day salute (the) president”
So, who wrote that message? One person? Two or more persons? The word “internal” and the phrases "over try"and “left for years in a dream” suggest a writer whose message most people can understand. They suggest a writer who is aware of her own mind. I suggest that the person who wrote those phrases is the executive aspect of “personality” or personhood, if you will. It seems that this part supervises its constituents, keeps them in line and more or less united in a communicable sense of reality. Otherwise, these aspects appear to wander off, assert themselves as individual takes on reality and wreak havoc with memory and time.
J. cannot focus on watching a movie for over 20 minutes. She cannot write a complete sentence. Yet she can describe movies she has seen and can speak in complete, coherent sentences.
Now J. admits to affective schizophrenia. And, you are right. Who am I to challenge her defenses. Yet, on the other hand, who am to deny her excusions into common reality?
That does not sound like D.I.D.
In DID the person shifts between clearly distinguishable personality types who often have different ages and even sexes and certainly voices and vocabularies. Some personalities may be aware of some or all the others, often some, including the main one, are not aware. These people generally have gone through catastrophic abuse. There are not many of them.
Schizophrenia is not clearly tied to trauma and there are no extra personalities. The split is from reality, it is not a split in the mind. At least that is how the term was constructed. Here you generally have hallucinations and delusions and the person is likely to have incredible problems functioning.
I really hate separating J. from the real to the impersonal. I think of her as a person rather than as a subject of dispassionate discussion. As a ‘person,’ given center stage by ier, J. has become the symbol of MI and the ‘poster child’ for the need to continue trying to find some sort of relief–or cure–for MI. This should be as important as the need to find an answer to the energy crisis or global warming.
Look at the number of philosophers who, according to society, ultimately succumbed to MI.
I’m sorry you feel this way. We humans are stuck with objective/subjective takes on reality. And hopefully, these balance. If you love someone who has an illness, you will try to learn everything you can about that illness from any source possible. I present my friend here, not in the insulting position of MI poster child, but as a real, live person with needs. If you can’t see that, please refrain from insults or avoid this thread. Your take here would discredit such remarkable people as Oliver Sacks, who publicizes his personal experiences with persons, including himself, who have mental problems.
Moreno makes sense.
Currently, I’m reading Michael Robbins’ “Experiences of Schizophrenia” (1993). Robbins’ work is a bit stuffy and contains outdated neuroscientific references, but it provides a decent summary of the history of medical descriptions of schizophrenia. The work thematically alligns with a concern shared by many of our contemporary psychotherapists.
The shared concern is that research into a complex matter such as schizophrenia should incorporate ideas from a wide range of disciplines such as neuroscience, genetics, sociology, psychology, etc. The concern is with the concept of parsimony. While this may offer a standardized tool for clarification in the mathematical/philosophical sense, it may not offer understandings of many interconnections necessary for comprehending the complexity of living. thinking humans. As A. Huxley put it, a complex problem may not have a simple solution.
I think we are recognizing here, with our difficulties in arriving at common definitions for such terms as normalcy, personality, reality, identity, etc., that some models for diagnosis and therapy are, as Moreno notes, inadequate. One size fits all descritions omit too much relevant information. Holistic approaches to therapy, provided that they are grounded on respect for individual human dignity, are sorely needed.
Until your last post, Ier, I thought your intent was to help J. Now it seems your intent is to increase your knowledge of MI–not to help J. I’ll do as you ask, and avoid this thread from now on. But I’ll always wonder about J. You made her very real to me.
Liz,
I really don’t want you to leave. I want you to understand that there is no conflict in my mind about gathering helpful information and seeing J. as a real live human being. I wish you could understand that. It was your “poster child” assertion that prompted my negative reaction. I could just as well have presented this thread with reference to my best friend C. who died of Huntingtons and whose reality was, to me at least, weird.
Moreno,
What prompted me to consider DID is J.s description of herself from the POV of someone else. She also tells me that other people, such as her mother, possess her mind.* I asked her once, when she was the “other” what her name was. She responded with nonsense syllables.
- These are her descriptions. I do not impose my opinions on her.
Typing through tears. Thanks to those who offered genuine support and tolerated my excursions into the safe, comforting realms of academic discussion.
Bye.
I can see why you went there. And none of us are in direct contact with this person so everything is speculative - and hell, even with direct diagnosis with a psychiatrist we are still dealing potentially with a lot of speculation. I used to work professionally in the field, not as a psychiatrist, and even what your wrote above does not make me think DID, which is extremely rare, in any case. But obviously no decisions should be made based on people guessing via the internet.