DID video

Again I return to DID...

I was thinking about the postmodern idea of a non-unified self, the self as fragments, masks, or identity components more than a real unified thing. I also read somewhere on-line (TV Tropes, oddly enough) about people with multiple personalities who want to be recognized as more than one person inhabiting/sharing a single body rather than fragments or parts of a whole person. I must say that I'm skeptical about the postmodernist project, but I will allow that the postmodernist project was perhaps necessary for our culture and that it has some important insights. Noticing a connection between these academic ideas (po-mo) and actual psychological events and identity politics (DID) I YouTubed it, and found the above video. Hopefully I posted it successfully. Anyway, other videos in her channel are interesting. "Advise?" and something about hair and a ring are worth watching.

There is some controversy surrounding DID, among which is the contention in the psychiatric community that it does not exist. I do realize that YouTube videos hardly constitute evidence as they can be faked, and I realize I'm a non-specialist who knows next to nothing about the issue, but from what little I have seen it seems to me that not many people are actually listening to what the sufferers (if sufferers they are) have to say about the issue.

I find this a fascinating topic. With luck researching it can be more than just "diversity voyeurism", a term I just made up to capture a sort of scientific-colonial tourism justified by political correctness and the supposed to desire to expand one's mind. With luck researching this topic can lead instead to actual liberation for the people who have this psychological phenomenon, and, perhaps, for the rest of us.

I'm too tired to be more coherent than that, and probably I'm being foolish. Time for bed.

Edit: It occured to me last night after posting this that it sounds as though I was saying that some guy researching people with DID on the Internet might somehow help those with DID. This is clearly an absurd position, one that not even a tired version of me would think valid. Rather, that research must end with something. In my case I would be thinking publication but it doesn't have to be that. But research must have fruit in order for it to be valuable. Research for research's sake is a silly and wasteful concept, in my opinion.

Edit 2: To clarify, DID stands for Disassociative Identity Disorder. That is the term people are using these days, but formerly it was called Multiple Personality Disorder. It is an entirely different thing from schizophrenia. If you did not know that schizophrenia, split personality disorder, and bipolar disorder were different things, then I highly suggest you look it up.