Does DID exist?

Having said that Judi has DID, we'd better dispose of the idea that DID doesn't exist. If you read enough on the topic, you'll find that some people believe that DID is either a fantasy indulged in by self-absorbed people or something unwittingly taught to patients by doctors. I know a few DID people and have read a fair bit about it and I have no doubt at all that it exists. I've lived with a DID sufferer for about ten years now and have seen the effects over and over again. Either Judi is the best actor the world has ever seen or she has multiple personalities.

Unlike the Monkees, I'm not a believer. I find it hard to believe in anything - I have to see it to believe it and even then I wouldn't call it belief to accept what your eyes tell you, I'd call it knowledge. Given something strange, I'd far rather find a simple explanation than a complicated one. In the case of DID, the simplest explanation is that people can have multiple identities. To understand this, we have to reflect on what a personality is. To me, it's a pattern of behavior exhibited by a person that is repeatable and predictable. As a physicist, I like to think of a personality as being indicative of non-linear dynamics but if that means nothing to you, don't worry. Here's an analogy - in the days of long playing records played by a needle running around in a spiral groove, they used to make trick LPs with multiple but separate grooves. By choosing the starting point at random, you could select an entirely different song, or by nudging the record player, you could skip from one song to another. When DID people get nudged, they can switch personalities. This analogy isn't quite right but it's suggestive.

So why do people not accept the idea of DID? I can think of a number of reasons:

• It's pretty strange - if I haven't lived with Judi, I probably wouldn't have believed it.
  
• Some people have a very straightforward view of how the mind works that doesn't accommodate something as strange as DID. As a long time meditator, I know that my mind is really strange anyway so it doesn't bother me.
• DID is supposed to be caused by the severe and persistent abuse of young children. This is horrible to even contemplate so for some people it's preferable to deny DID.
• For the same reason, some parents or family members implicated even indirectly may wish to deny DID.

So, yes, it exists. As I said, it's the simplest explanation of what Judi and I have experienced.

Tim