What people are having issues with is the convenient amnesia when it’s helpful and apparent lack of amnesia when it’s needed. IfDID exists, shouldn’t the alters be completely unaware that the others exist? The concept of a headspace where everyone can meet and chitchat is bullshit. These personalities would have to be “running” in the background so to speak. As if they were their own people with thoughts, feelings, and brains. How is one brain “thinking” for 20+ people while the front personality is also using it for day to day necessities. All while not being aware... or if they are aware... how can they function with 20+ other thoughts running through their head?
that's the bit that gets me, the "inner world" bullshit. It always seemed dubious to me that someone can have different characters all living their lives together inside some intricate made-up space in their head. Similarly, is that "co-conscious" thing even recognized as a real DID phenomenon? I can understand "voices," like in the context of schizophrenia, but I just don't understand how you can literally have multiple consciousnesses with different streams of thought occurring at the same time.
@Shriek the Ogre's
post was very illuminating. Worth pointing out too that the "paper" is more of an opinion piece than anything else. It's not published in a research journal and there was no real research study done. The author also don't even seem to cite a study supporting her claim that the "safe place" therapy is actually effective in practice, which is a bit negligent imo. Regardless, it seems worthless from a scientific perspective.
I did a bit of a dive of my own to try and see if the scientific literature actually discusses this. I had a hard time finding much, so I did a more general search and found
this page, though it unfortunately looks like a bit like a tumblr blog if I'm being honest. It only gives two citations, the first one is a
book, but it's not really scientific (or research, for that matter). It appears to essentially be a collection of anecdotes relating to therapy techniques and claims it's based on "Janetian psychology of action," which is some vague Freudian-era shit. The other source mentioned doesn't actually make the claim the site attributes to it, it's just discussing various theories that have been held in the past about dissociation and cites a
1997 paper, which, quite disturbingly, is about Freudian "oedipal conflict" and "ego" pseudoscience. The claim it makes about "inscapes" (i.e. "inner worlds") appears to be a 1994 conference paper which I can't find anywhere and isn't cited anywhere else. Though imo that probably indicates that it wasn't very high-quality. The other sources cited are specifically about worlds which can supposedly be created by a therapist through guided hypnosis (essentially what Shriek was referring to). I stopped digging at that point because it's only tangentially related and it delves into false/implanted memory territory imo.
So, in summary, I've lost faith in psychology in one exploratory sitting lol (joking). At least from what I've found, this shit seems to be rooted in BS Freudian pseudoscience. I couldn't find anything based in actual scientific research. I guess maybe it can be hard to create experiments for certain things in psychology, but it seems fucked up to make a claim and call it science while not actually base it in anything scientific.