MPD

There are intelligent and knowledgable people who doubt the very existence of something we can define as Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD). To them, MPD is a fake. The line drawn around it is incorrect. It doesn’t actually follow the observed energy flows. The patterns that are gathered up disperse at the slightest thing in all different directions.

If I recall correctly, it has little neural consistency- multiple identities welcome various brains, and the neuroanatomists of the world have been unable to draw a picture of what your brain looks like when there is more than one person in there. Furthermore, some people who have it seem to defiantly challenge sense. They have 1000 personalities. One of them’s a duck. Two are Abe Lincoln. As they go through their day, their minds are like the House of Commons on a bad day with some comic book characters thrown in. You could make a good case for not bothering with the specific symptoms, and just calling them crazy.

To me, MPD is real enough, it’s just more mind than body. To some, perhaps including some of the aforementioned neuroanatomists, minds are less real than bodies. I think that focus has helped advance Western medicine by leaps and bounds, but it is time to start filling in that medical blind spot called the mind. (That might be a little harsh, but remember, among neurologists, Oliver Sacks is the exception, not the rule.) Many physical issues merely reflect unsolved mental problems, as the body tries to cope with clashing instructions from the mind. Perhaps MPD is the mental reflection of a spiritual crisis. The soul needs to express itself, and if the mind won’t let it, there will be tension, friction, a buildup of energy. One can only sustain so much. Clouds burst, dams collapse, or maybe drainage systems are installed or some of the flow is rerouted, perhaps into an alternate personality.

MPD is an extreme case- most people find less jarring ways to be more fully themselves (and that issue is virtually universal among humans). Those who define these things, and those who use those definitions may do better to call MPD a solution, not a problem. The problem is whatever required a second personality to solve. Whatever therapies are used should look toward finding a solution that harmonizes better with the person and the world around them.