Multiple personalities

WHEN Timmy drinks orange juice he has no problem. But Timmy is just one of close to a dozen personalities who alternate control over a patient with multiple personality disorder. And if those other personalities drink orange juice, the result is a case of hives.
The hives will occur even if Timmy drinks orange juice and another personality appears while the juice is still being digested. What's more, if Timmy comes back while the allergic reaction is present, the itching of the hives will cease immediately, and the water-filled blisters will begin to subside.
Such remarkable differences in the same body are leading scientists to study the physiology of patients with multiple personalities to assess how much psychological states can affect the body's biology, for better or worse. The researchers are discovering that such patients offer a unique window on how the mind and body can interact.
Researchers feel that the study of these patients may also have significant implications for people with the medical disorders that are found to differ from one sub-personality to another. If the mechanisms through which these differences occur can be discovered, it may be possible to teach people some similar degree of control over these problems.
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''We're finding the most graphic demonstrations to date of the power of the mind to affect the body,'' said Dr. Bennet Braun, a psychiatrist at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center in Chicago, and a leading pioneer in the research.
''If the mind can do this in tearing down body tissue, I think it suggests the same potential for healing,'' said Dr. Braun, who directs a 10-bed psychiatric unit that uses psychotherapy, hypnosis and drugs to treat people with multiple personalities. He said he believed that the drastic physical changes seen in patients going from personality to personality could be duplicated for emotionally normal people under hypnosis.
In people with multiple personalities, there is a strong psychological separation between each sub-personality; each will have his own name and age, and often some specific memories and abilities. Frequently, for example, personalities will differ in handwriting, artistic talent or even in knowledge of foreign languages.
Multiple personalities typically develop in people who were severely and repeatedly abused as children, apparently as a means to protect themselves against the pain of the abuse. Often only one or two of the sub-personalities will be conscious of the abuse, while others will have no memory or experience of the pain. It is unclear why some abused children develop the syndrome while others do not.
For more than a century clinicians have occasionally reported isolated cases of dramatic biological changes in people with multiple personalities as they switched from one to another. These include the abrupt appearance and disappearance of rashes, welts, scars and other tissue wounds; switches in handwriting and handedness; epilepsy, allergies and color blindness that strike only when a given personality is in control of the body.
Today, using refined research techniques, scientists are bringing greater rigor to the study of multiple personalities and focusing on a search for the mechanisms that produce the varying physiological differences in each personality.. Reaction to Medication
One of the problems for psychiatrists trying to treat patients with multiple personalties is that, depending which personality is in control, a patient can have drastically different reactions to a given psychiatric medication. For instance, it is almost always the case that one or several of the personalities of a given patient will be that of a child. And the differences in responses to drugs among the sub-personalities often parallel those ordinarily found when the same drug at the same dose is given to a child, rather than an adult.
In a recent book, ''The Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder,'' published by the American Psychiatric Press, Dr. Braun describes several instances in which different personalities in the same body responded differently to a given dose of the same medication. A tranquilizer, for instance, made a childish personality of one patient sleepy and relaxed, but gave adult personalities confusion and racing thoughts. An anti-convulsant prescribed for epilepsy that was given another patient had no effect on the personalities except those under the age of 12.
In another patient, 5 milligrams of diazepam, a tranquilizer, sedated one personality, while 100 milligrams had little effect on another personality.
Some of the recent findings on such changes will be reported at an international conference on multiple personalities that Dr. Braun will convene next October in Chicago. The reports will include other physical differences from personality to personality, such as seizures, eating disorders, and different neurological and sensory profiles. Optical Differences
One of those reports will be on a study by Scott Miller, a psychologist at the University of Utah, of optical differences in people with multiple personality. Dr. Miller had an opthalmologist give a battery of standard optical tests to 10 patients and a control group of nonpatients. After each battery, the opthalmologist would leave the room while the patient switched personalties, sometimes at will and sometimes with prompting, then return and repeat the test.
The study included a control group of another 10 people who feigned switching personalties, unknown to the examiner, to remove a potential source of bias.
The study, which will be published in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, found that there were significant changes in visual acuity, in the shape and curvature of the eye and in refraction from personality to personality in the real patients, but hardly any among the others tested.
The opthalmic exam also found some clinical differences apart from the standard tests. One woman had three personalities, aged 5, 17 and 35.. When the five-year-old was examined, she had a condition, common in childhood, known as ''lazy eye,'' in which one eye turns in toward the nose. The condition was not present in the 17-year-old or the 35-year-old.
Similar differences were found in other patients. ''One patient had had his left eye injured in a fight, so that it turned out,'' said Dr. Miller. ''But the condition only appeared in one of his personalities. It disappeared in the others, nor was there any evidence of muscle imbalance.''
The study corroborates an observation of vision differences that had often been made by those treating multiple-personality cases. ''Many patients have told me they have a drawer full of eyeglasses at home, and they never are quite sure which to bring when they go out,'' Dr. Braun said. How Mind Regulates Biology
The medical phenomena being discovered in multiple personalities stretch the imagination, but researchers believe that they represent only the extreme end of a normal continuum. The effects found in these patients, they say, are graphic examples of the power of states of mind to regulate the body's biology. By studying them, researchers hope to find clues to links between mind and body that can help people with other psychiatric problems, as well as point the way to powers of healing that may one day be of use in treating normal medical patients.
The lesson for psychophysiology from multiple personalities is that a given personality has as its biological underpinning a specific pattern of mental and biological states, according to Dr. Frank Putnam, a psychiatrist at the Laboratory of Developmental Psychology at the National Institute of Health. In a sense, Dr. Putnam said, there is a ''biological self'' that corresponds to the psychological self; as the psychological one shifts, so does the biological.
''We have a work self and a play self, for instance, but we are the same person,'' said Dr. Putnam. ''But each of those selves has its own repertoire of emotional states, memories and, to some extent, an underlying biological pattern. Those minor differences are seen in their extremes in the patients with multiple personality.''
The biological differences found in the patients, Dr. Putnam believes, reflect the range of states of mind that each sub-personality typically manifests. Many of them are extreme: the terrror of a frightened child, the hatred of an avenger.
''A given state of consciousness has its biological reality,'' said Dr. Putnam. ''By keeping these states separate and distinct, the patients create biologically separate selves.'' Mechanism of Change
Dr. Putnam, who has done extensive research on patients with multiple personalities, is now focusing his interest on how they switch from one personality to another. During the switch, there is typically a period of seconds or even minutes when heart rate, breath rate and other physiological markers show a disorganization, which is followed by a new pattern typical of the personality that is emerging.
Some of the most striking changes occur in the tension levels of the person's facial muscles. It is almost as though the person were donning a new face, according to Dr. Putnam.
The changes also include blood flow patterns in the brain, according to findings by Dr. Putnam and other researchers. The blood flow changes were observed while different personalities performed the same mental tasks.
''The transitions in children from one extreme state to another is every bit as abrupt as in the patients,'' said Dr. Putnam. ''You see it in the child who switches from crying to laughing, or who cries himself to sleep. Normally, adults don't switch that abruptly; one of the tasks of growing is learning to keep the switching under control. Children have to make an effort so that their school self doesn't behave like their home self, for instance.''
In the children who respond to severe abuse by developing multiple personalities, Dr. Putnam believes, the usual integration of various ''selves'' did not occur. Such children seem to make use of two psychological capacities to protect themselves against the pain of abuse. One is the ability to enter an altered state of consciousnsess, such as a hypnotic trance, an ability that peaks at around the age of nine. Another is the capacity to dissociate, to separate one aspect of experience from another.
''It's adaptive for the children to keep the states separate, so that they can keep the awareness of the abuse from their other selves,'' said Dr. Putnam. ''That way the feelings and memories don't flood them while they are at school, for instance.'' Universal Phenomenon
The switches that patients with multiple personality go through are a special case of a universal phenomenon, according to an article by Dr. Putnam in the current issue of Dissociation, a journal devoted to multiple personality and related disorders. Anyone who goes from one extreme emotional state to another undergoes major biological shifts akin to those observed in those with multiple personality, according to Dr. Putnam. They are no different from the plunges into extreme emotion seen, for instance, in patients who go from depression to a manic state, or in someone having a panic attack, he said.
''But the switches are harder to catch in other disorders; they're more random,'' said Dr. Putnam. ''But some multiples can switch six times in an hour. They're a better laboratory for study.''
Through studying such patients, Dr. Braun believes, wider medical applications may be discovered. He points, for instance, to one patient who had a blood pressure of 150/110 when one personality was in control, and a pressure of only 90/60 when another personality took over.
''They can teach us much about the mechanisms by which we shift from one state of consciousness to another,'' Dr. Putnam said. ''Most of psychiatry deals with helping people shift from one unpleasant state to another, more pleasant one.''
http://www.deeptrancenow.com/exc2_multiplepersonality.htm
Multiple Personality Disorder - MPD
Multiple Personality disorder, or MPD, is a bizarre syndrome in which two or more distinct personalities inhabit a single body. People who suffer from this disorder , or "multiples", often have an awareness of their condition. They do not realize that control of their body is being passed back and forth between different personalities and instead feel they are suffering from some kind of amnesia, confusion, or black-out spells. Most multiples average between eight to thirteen personalities, although so-called super-multiples may have more than a hundred subpersonalities.
One of the most telling statistics regarding multiples is that 97 percent of them have had a history of severe childhood trauma, often in the form of monstrous psychological, physical, and sexual abuse. This has led many researchers to conclude that becoming a multiple is the psyche's way of coping with extraordinary and soul-crushing pain. By dividing up into one or more personalities the psyche is able to parcel out the pain, in a way, and have several personalities bear what would be too much for just one personality to withstand.
In this sense becoming a multiple may be the ultimate example of what Bohm means by fragmentation. It is interesting to note that when the psyche fragments itself, it does not become a collection of broken and jagged-edged shards, but a collection of smaller wholes, complete and self-sustaining with their own traits, motives, and desires. Although these wholes are not identical copies of the original personality, they are related to the dynamics of the original personality, and this in itself suggests that some kind of holographic process is involved.
Another unusual feature of MPD is that each of a multiple's personalities possesses a different brain-wave pattern. In addition to possessing different brain-wave patterns, the subpersonalities of a multiple have a strong psychological separation from one another. Each has his own name, age, memories, and abilities. Often each also has his own style of handwriting, announced gender, cultural and racial background, artistic talents, foreign language fluency, and IQ.
Even more noteworthy are the biological changes that take place in a multiple's body when they switch personalities. Frequently a medical condition possessed by one personality will mysteriously vanish when another personality takes over.
Dr. Bennet Braun of the International Society for the Study of Multiple Personality, in Chicago, has documented a case in which all of a patient's subpersonalities were allergic to orange juice, except one. If the man drank orange juice when one of his allergic personalities was in control, he would break out in a terrible rash. But if he switched to his nonallergic personality, the rash would instantly start to fade and he could drink orange juice freely.
Allergies are not the only thing multiples can switch on and off. If there was any doubt as to the control of the unconscious mind has over drug effects, it is banished by the pharmacological wizardry of the multiple. By changing personalities, a multiple who is drunk can instantly become sober. Different personalities also respond differently to different drugs.
Braun records a case in which 5 milligrams of diazepam, a tranquilizer, sedated one personality, while 100 milligrams had little or no effect on another.
Often one or several of a multiple's personalities are children, and if an adult personality is given a drug and then a child's personality take over, the adult dosage may be too much for the child and result in an overdose. It is also difficult to anesthetize some multiples, and there are accounts of multiples waking up on the operating table after one of their "unanesthetizable" subpersonalities has taken over.
Other conditions that can vary from personality to personality include scars, burn marks, cysts, and left- and right-handedness. Visual acuity can differ, and some multiples have to carry two or three different pairs of eyeglasses to accommodate their alternating personalities. One personality can be color-blind and another not, and even eye color can change.
There are cases of women who have two or three menstrual periods each month because each of their subpersonalities has its own cycle.
Speech pathologist Christy Ludlow has found that the voice pattern for each of a multiple's personalities is different, a feat that requires such a deep physiological change that even the most accomplished actor cannot alter his voice enough to disguise his voice pattern.
One multiple, admitted to a hospital for diabetes, baffled her doctors by showing no symptoms when one of her nondiabetic personalities was in control.
There are accounts of epilepsy coming and going with changes in personality, and psychologist Robert A. Phillips, Jr. reports that even tumors can appear and disappear (although he does not specify what kind of tumors).
Multiples also tend to heal faster than normal individuals. For example, there are several cases on record of third-degree burns healing with extraordinary rapidity. Most eerie of all, at least one researcher, Dr. Cornelia Wilbur, the therapist whose pioneering treatment of Sybil Dorsett was portrayed in the book Sybil - is convinced that multiples don't age as fast as other people.
At a recent symposium on the multiple personality syndrome, a multiple named Cassandra provided a possible answer. Cassandra attributes her own rapid healing ability both to the visualization techniques she practices and to something she calls "parallel processing". As she explained, even when her alternate personalities are not in control of her body, they are still aware. This enables her to "think" on a multitude of different channels at once, to do things like work on several different term papers simultaneously, and even "sleep" while other personalities prepare her dinner and clean her house.
Hence, whereas normal people only do healing imagery exercises two or three times a day, Cassandra does them around the clock. She even has a subpersonality named Celese who possesses a thorough knowledge of anatomy and physiology, and whose sole function is to spend twenty-four hours a day meditating and imaging the body's well-being. According to Cassandra, it is this full-time attention to her health that gives her an edge over normal people. Other multiples have made similar claims.
From the book "Holographic Universe"
Holographic Universe
by Michael Talbot
Talbot explains the theory advanced by U. of London physicist David Bohm and Stanford U. neurophysiologist Karl Pribram that despite its apparent tangible reality, the universe is actually a kind of three- dimensional projection and is ultimately no more real than a hologram, a three-dimensional image projected into space. The book has some amazing stories.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/36533449@N02/3550534660/
Amazing Studies of Patients with Multiple Personality Disorder
Multiple personality disorders graphically illustrate how the mind can affect the body in extraordinary ways. Scientists have incorporated people with MPD to study many kinds of phenomenon. The personalities in a multiple have a strong psychological separation from one another. Each has his own name, age, abilities and memories. Many times each subpersonality has his/her own style of handwriting, cultural background, artistic talents, foreign language fluency, and IQ.
Even more astonishing are the biological changes that change with each personality. Often medical conditions possessed by one personality will disappear when another personality takes over. Dr. Bennett Braun of the International Society for the Study of Multiple Personality, in Chicago, has documented a case in which all of a patient's personalities were allergic to orange juice, except one. If the man drank orange juice when he was being one of the allergic personalities, he would break out in a terrible rash. But, if he switched to his non-allergic personality, the rash would instantly start to fade, and he could drink orange juice with no medical consequences.
Dr. Francine Howland, a Yale psychiatrist who speacializes in treating multiples, relates an even more striking incident involving a patient and a wasp sting. At one appointment, the man showed up with with his eye completely swollen and shut from a wasp sting. Howland called an ophthalmologist, wanting to get the patient treatment for the sting.
Unfortunately, the ophthalmologist could not see the man for an hour, and because the man was in severe pain, Howland decided to try an alternate personality. As it turned out, another personality was anesthetic, feeling absolutely no pain. The pain ended, but something else happened...by the time the man got to his eye appointment, the swelling was gone and his eye had returned to normal. Seeing no need to treat him, the ophthalmologist sent him home. After a while, however, the man's original personality took control back, and the pain and swelling returned with a vengence. The next day, he went back to the ophthalmologist and was treated. The eye doctor phoned Howland because "he thought time was playing tricks on him." He wanted to make sure that it was the day before when Dr. Howland had phoned him about treatment for the man. Howland laughed, told him that the man had multiple personality disorder and explained what had happened.
"Allergies are not the only things multiples can switch on and off. If there was any doubt as to the control the unconscious mind has over drug effects, it is banished by the pharmacological wizardry of the multiple." By changing personalities, a drunk person can instantly become sober, and different personalities within a multiple also respond differently to various drugs. Braun records a case in which 5 mg of Valium sedated one personality, while 100 mg had little or no effect on another. Often one or more personalities of a mutliple are children. While an adult personality is at the forefront and takes an adult dose of medicine he/she is fine, but, if one of the child personalities abruptly takes over, he/she may overdose.
With a change of personalities in multiples, scars appear and disappear, burn marks do the same, as well as cysts! The multiple can change from being right-handed to being left-handed with ease and agility. Visual accuity can differ, so that some multiples have to carry two or three different pairs of glasses. One personality can be color blind and the other not. Even EYE COLOR can change! Speech pathologist, "Christy Ludlow has found that the voice pattern for each of a multiple's personalities is different, a feat that required such a deep physiological change that even the most accomplished actor can not alter his voice enough to disguise his voice pattern."
One multiple, admitted to the hospital for diabetes complications, baffled her doctors by showing no symptoms when, without warning, one of her nondiabetic personalities took control,. The patient instantly showed no signs of being diabetic. There are also accounts of epilepsy coming and going with personality changes. Robert A. Phillips, Jr., a psychologist, reports that he has even seen tumors appear and disappear, although he doesn't specify what type of tumors.
Multiples tend to heal faster. For example, there are several cases on record of third-degree burns healing with extraordinary rapidity. Most eerie of all, at least one researcher, Dr. Cornelia Wilbur, the therapist whose pioneering treatment of Sybil Dorsett (of the book and movie "Sybil") is convinced that multiples do not age as fast as other people.
How could such things be? We are deeply attached to the inevitability and "reality" of things. If we have bad vision, we have it for life; and, if we suffer from diabetes, we do not for a moment think our condition might vanish with a change in mood or thought. But the phenomenon of multiple personalities challenges this belief and offers further evidence of just how much our psychological states can affect the biology of the body. The systems of control that must be in place to account for such capacities is mind-boggling. An allergic reaction to a wasp sting is a complex process, involving organized activity of antibodies, the production of histamine, the dilation of blood vessels, etc.
Most amazing is the fact that after a multiple has undergone therapy and reconciled his/her personalities into a single personality, he or she can STILL make these changes at will. This suggests that somewhere in our psyches, we all have the ability to control these things. Some scientists believe that this is possible because our universe is holographic in nature.
Ponder that Earthlings!!
http://www.nytimes.com/1988/06/28/science/probing-the-enigma-of-multiple-personality.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm