if a person can control their alters can't they just suppress them from resurfacing? if one altar can negotiate with another can he/she get rid of them? as an agreement or is it much more difficult than that?
or do the altars not want to disappear because they have some sort of self awareness? i think kathleen mentioned that the altars' existences were dependent on their handler-
but aren't altars just extensions of the core personality? the original one
i'm really interested to see what the brain chemistry of this disorder looks like
so in the case where they can't control their altars and are slaves there is no true core personality anymore, right? because their true self would be 'altar a'
i really wonder about the psychological aspects of this- having multiple personas in one body- would that mean each altar has different thoughts/emotions? different levels of intelligence and self awareness? it's fascinating
(side note has anyone seen this horror movie about DID)
So altar A doesn't necessarily have to be the core altar, but there has to be an altar A in order to appear normal whether you develop DID as an independent coping mechanism or whether you are programmed.
Usually, in cases where people don't talk of programming, there isn't a whole lot of discussion about the core altar either.
Discussing the concept of a core is really just a method of identifying when the first split happened. So the core represents the last moment that a person was integrated with all their altar states rather than a core altar that retains an original personality that the other states will integrate with.
So it is easier to look at the development of altars from the adult perspective of a integrated conscious that alternates in its states of consciousness most noticeably between sleep and time spent awake. There is one altar state for sleeping and there is another for when you are awake, and the states seems opposite to each other or not related in any clear way.
Then, if you break down the altar states of sleep into smaller pieces, you see a new variety of altar states that change as the person goes into a deep sleep, but what connects each state to each other, and how do they work together to go through the stages of sleep in a specific order?
Now, if were to regress the awareness in the minor changes of altar states of an adult consciousness back to the time that a child is learning to walk. Let's ask ourselves whether the transition to learning to walk requires a change of altar states similar to the changes that takes place during sleep. If the transition time while learning to walk breaks up this task into a series of altar states, and these altar are never needed again for the rest of the person's life, would it be possible to freeze them and use them for other purposes?
So, a child is potentially experiencing many, many changes in altar states that resemble the changes in altar states that takes place when we are transitioning into a state of deep sleep, although we will never need to make these changes in altar states twice.
So then this would explain why people don't develop DID when they experience trauma as adults because they don't have altar states changing as they complete different stages of development the way a child does.
Then, reintegration is just basically reordering altar states that have somehow been taken out of order. For example, let's say we removed the altar state of deep sleep, so that the altar state of deep sleep didn't develop. It remained a child. You could never sleep well and then you always felt tired because you never reached this state of consciousness. In the integration process, we learn about this, deep sleep returns where they belong, and now you can sleep normally and everything feels better.
That is kind of what it is like although with child states completing tasks like learning to walk that they will never use again, there are more features of personality there than there would be with a state of deep sleep. Essentially, altar states are like puzzle pieces, and DID is just a complete person with their pieces in a box instead of put together the way they should be.
The way altars change and become different personalities is because they will experience different things. This basically demonstrates that personality is influenced by external features. This would be a two step process, because DNA could also play a role in personality, but experience definitely influences our behavior.
The reason Kathleen says an altar is dependent upon a handler is because a handler will script an altar. This is where drugs and electroshock come into play. Picture what you would think if you had just been electrocuted? How long do you think it would take to remember things like your favorite color or your best friend's name?
So at five years old someone engineers a situation where you experience something that terrifies you so much that you don't want to be there and you dissociate; while giving you drugs or electroshock that makes it difficult to remember basic things about who you are.
So you dissociate, but you also suffer a temporary amnesia that a child dissociating to cope with abuse might not experience.
The perpetrator knows that this happens so he tells you that your name is Taylor. He says you like to sing. He says people want to hear you sing.
You've dissociated and suffered memory loss and you don't know who this person is even if they are the perpetrator who tortured you before this. The room is black. There is nothing to remind you of anything, so you think maybe he is right. Maybe it is possible that my name is Taylor and I like to sing.
Then he sings a song for you like twinkle twinkle little star and because your mind wants to remember something so badly, you memorize what he says instantly. It could have 8 verses, you would memorize them all the first time through because you are really scanning the song for anything that would help you remember who you are. The song does not help accomplish this.
Then he tells you to sing and you start to sing. He says you sing wonderfully and that makes you feel happy, so maybe it is okay to be Taylor even if you don't know how you got here or whether there was anything that ever happened before this.
Then, because of the exhaustion, you fall asleep, which takes you through several different altar states until finally you wake up as before and you are going to get ready for school. Things just seem strange, but you can remember that your name is Brittany now because the drugs and/or the effects of electroshock have worn off to return these memories to your consciousness.
These are just very generic examples. I also think that people would understand this subject a lot better if they studied more basic examples of DID. They really help in understanding the more complex situations like Kathleen Sullivan's story or the possibility that other people in entertainment are functioning with a dissociative disorder.
"When Rabbit Howls" is another personal account I would recommend. She doesn't experience programming, but she does have a sort of polyfragmented DID that there are not many examples of outside of the subject of programming. She was older when she found a psychiatrist and approached him and his team to study her condition. I think there were college students involved, but they would all watch her therapy sessions in order to study polyfragmented dissociation. She is a really fascinating case of all that a person is capable of with polyfragmented DID. She was actually very successful in business and most people just thought she was a little dysfunctional with personal relationships, but fairly proficient otherwise.
Most people would never have guessed that she had a bunch of different altar states.
Anyways, that's long enough for now.