Multiple Personalities

The general public is bewildered and fascinated by Multiple Personality Disorder/Dissociative Identity Disorder. Through books, television and movies, a distorted view of DID is often presented. While it may make for good entertainment, it fails to truly present the depth and intensity of the inherent trauma. Outside the ordinary day-to-day life experience of most people, it is hard to understand. Ignoring past trauma simply will not help a patient.

This Volume 2 continues the discussions begun in Volume 1 concerning Multiple Personality Disorder/Dissociative Identity Disorder. This Volume focuses on giving patients, support networks and therapists the foundation to heal and support healing of those with DID. Those who wish to learn about treating DID from a clinician's perspective will find guidance in both Volumes. The key point of understanding that ignoring past trauma simply will not help a patient. In his psychiatric practice, the author encountered a number of his patients' alters face-to-face.

This is the 3rd Volume of the Engaging Multiple Personalities Series by David Yeung. This Volume is written directly to and for the DID/MPD community and its support network. It is practical advice for Living in Multiplicity. It addresses issues for people who are still looking for a therapist with experience treating DID, to begin to build a foundation for healing right now.

Christine Ducommun was a happily married wife and mother of two when, after returning to live in the house of her childhood, she began to experience panic attacks and night terrors. Says the author, "I sought therapy, and there I discovered, to my shock and horror, that I had been sexually abused at the hands of my father at a very early age. I surely didn't want to believe it. But as my mind began to release bizarre flashbacks, my alters began to show themselves.

Cammie is a healthy little girl who lives with her mother, father, little sister Prissy, and her grandmother. Cammie thinks there is something wrong with her because she hates her mother and yet loves her too. She feels lonely and scared many times. Her daddy works nights and she doesn’t feel safe with her mother. When Daddy has an accident and has to stay home to recuperate, things take an unusual turn. He becomes involved in his little girls’ lives and realizes that his wife isn’t the person he thought she was.

Cammie and her husband Dan start to deal with recovery, if for no other reason than to be functional parents to their precious baby girl, Angel. Recovery only seems to make things worse for the young couple when Cammie starts having blackouts. Dan and Cammie’s father and stepmother are terrified to leave her alone with the baby. Michelle is doing her best to suck Cammie back into the dark world of drugs and Satanism. How will Cammie deal with her mother, who is involved in the dark world of Satanism? Will she be lured back into the horrors of addiction and evil?

As a young adult, years after her physical abuse has ended, Maggie Walters struggles with an unpredictable temper and socially difficult behaviour. After several false starts she finds a therapist who she trusts, just enough, to start talking about the childhood locked away behind the anger and isolation she has learnt to live with. Eventually she is diagnosed with Multiple Personality Disorder, MPD (now known as Dissociative Identity Disorder or DID). Gradually, she understands.