About that “study” on non-trauma multiples…
I’m not going to reblog the other person talking about it, but kudos to them for providing a source so I could read it for myself.
Let me give you some fast facts about this “study”.
The hypothesis of this study can be boiled down “Multiplicity as a social construct exists separate from Dissociative disorders”.
The researchers feel their data supports this hypothesis.
The study DOES NOT say anything about DID/OSDD systems forming from trauma in later ages. That other post misunderstood.
It included a total of 6 participants. (That is very small)
The participants were found by searching the word “Multiplicity” and “Multiple System” online and recruiting people from Tumblr, Twitter and Google+.
The participants were uncooperative in participating in the original measure created (a questionnaire) and so only the information from the interviews was included.
The study consisted of interviewing these six people. That’s it. They just asked them why they identified as multiple and if they had been diagnosed with any mental health conditions.
Several of the participants did experience trauma but identify as “naturally” multiple for other reasons
One participant is diagnosed with DID, another admits they believe they likely have DID
The other part of this study came from the researchers reading people’s blogs on social media sites (like tumblr) and making generalizations about them, which is not fantastic scientific evidence.
Here’s the conclusion of the study:
With the increasing popularity and spread of the Internet, various forms of self-organized support groups have emerged. Multiplicity is a relatively new concept that encompasses people who consider themselves multiple by nature; that is, they have a group of individual selves who share the same body. It can be concluded that multiplicity is a label and a self-organized support group for people with severe identity disturbances, in some cases with symptoms of dissociative disorders. Further research is needed to assess clinically the underlying motivations, functionality and long-term changes in individuals who consider themselves multiple.
So the gist of it is basically that there are some people on the internet who say they are naturally multiple and sometimes they also have dissociative symptoms, and maybe psychologists should look into that some more! That’s the entire conclusion.
They are not validating natural multiplicity. They are not legitimizing it. All they did was interview six people who claimed to be natural multiples and then they recorded the data and said “we should look into this some more because this seems to be a thing that people are doing!”
All this paper says is “Hey, some people think they are naturally multiple” and we already knew that.
Side note: that other post about this paper is continuing to perpetuate some misunderstandings about the age cutoff of DID/OSDD. DID is caused by trauma that occurs before the ages of 6 to 9, but people may perceive their system to form much later. My perception was that my system formed when I was 12. Other parts of my own system disagree with me and have differing opinions on that! What is important is that our trauma happened during the critical period.
Anyway, read the paper for yourself here: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00938/full
Feel free to ask me questions about it. Research psychology used to be my jam!