Report of DID Inclusion Campaign Conference on 12 March 2011, London
The first meeting of the Campaign for the Inclusion and Recognition of Multiplicity and Dissociation was
held at Holloway Resource Centre on Saturday 12 March 2011. The venue was subsidised by the
Paracelsus Trust, the charitable wing of the Clinic for Dissociative Studies…
Over 200 people attended, well over half of whom were DID survivors and the remainder were principally
partners, carers, supporters, counsellors and other related professionals.
The following were among the speakers and presenters:
- Dr .Amelia Roberts, Campaign organizer
- Peter Saunders from NAPAC
- Mike Fisher from TAG
- Dr Pat Frankish from the Clinic for Dissociative Studies
- Dr. Ruth Cureton, a former GP (physician?) who has multiple personalities
- Valerie Sinason from the Clinic for Dissociative Studies
- Carolyn Spring
- Jane James, a person with multiple personalities* & survivor of ritual abuse
- Jo Rotas, a psychotherapist with multiple personalities
- Gail, a person with multiple personalities
- Carol Broad an individual with multiple personalities
- Nicky Robertson a Christian with multiple personalities
- “Mr E” a play was read
- Kim Noble, artist featured on the Oprah Show
- Rob Spring, husband to a woman with multiple personalities
- Jacqui Dillon, Hearing Voices Network
The Campaign states several goals.
- A vote was taken at the conference and the individuals with multiple personalities unanimously agreed that they want the definition of dissociative identity disorder to be excluded within the definition of borderline personality disorder.
- It was acknowledged that there are no guidelines for the most efficacious way to treat multiple personalities in NICE – “and that needs to change.”
- General practitioners have “no code for DID”. I assume they are referring to a billing code which many believe will legitimize DID, however, it does little more than make it possible for providers to get paid for their services.
- Increased training and public service provisions made
- Attention to increased funding claiming that short-term (3 months) therapy causes distress for patients. I believe this means that when patients learn they cannot be insured for long-term therapy, they feel they cannot get the best treatment necessary for their condition. This position is backed-up with the argument that more funding for longer therapy will decrease the need for hospital admissions.the traumatic circumstances in life which provoked them. …
Questioning Dissociative Identity Disorder, Multiple Personalities, and Plurals 
Lorne
/ 10/25/2011I’ve noticed that DID/MPD/SRA folks tend cluster together at certain websites. They are normally, as you would expect, white middle class women presided over by a senior Borderline or therapist.
I’ve spend a number of years thinking about these folks, their organization seems so familiar.
Then it hit me…
They organized like covens.
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Jeanette Bartha
/ 10/26/2011Well, I don’t know anything about covens.
But I know about cults, mind control, and thought reform. Read Robert J. Lifton who wrote about Chinese thought reform in the 1950s. His book is on my reading list. It’s a difficult read, but worth every minute.This therapy has all of the criterion to meet these issues. I experienced it in therapy with a colleague of Sybil’s psychiatrist, Connie Wilbur, MD. It’s for real and nothing to joke about as these women’s lives are in ruins. IMHO
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avalon111
/ 10/11/2011We (i.e. the editors of the Dramatis site, not me with lots of ‘multiple personalities’) were given some information about the charity The Paracelsus Trust. An amended entry with a few new insights is due inside the next fortnight, but even now the detail can be a little alarming;
http://www.dramatis.hostcell.net/SRA/RAINS4/rains4.html#campaign
The new updates will take a further look at the hopeless lack of interest by SRA/DID promoters to actually get around to finding any ‘ritual abusers’.
The ‘Campaign for the Inclusion and Recognition of Multiplicity and Dissociation’ though does challenge the concept of being a genuine ‘campaign’. The next meeting is scheduled for 2013! They skip 2012 altogether! The charity does support a simple web site, http://www.paracelsustrust.co.uk, which includes details of the charities aims, such as;
‘Research that will aid the public recognition of the reality of ritual abuse and Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)’
We don’t have ‘inside’ information about the charity, but do have a good source inside The Bowlby Centre, which has done its best to drag Dr. John Bowlby’s reputation into the gutter (see http://www.dramatis.hostcell.net/SRA/RAINS5/rains5.html#bowlby ). The difficulty SRA advocates have in the UK is that budget restraints are making it tough for psychotherapists to make the living they used to off the predominantly white middle-class and middle-aged women who could normally be relied-upon to go down the ‘I was satanically abused and now I’m a multiple’ route.
In addition, and this problem is being seen in the states, a lot of SRA/DID advocates are basically getting a little long-in-the-tooth. Those that were middle-aged during DID/SRA’s heyday (the early 1990s) are looking at or are already retired. With a few exceptions, few proponents have the energy and enthusiasm to battle with often well-informed skeptics. The ‘fundies’ and feminists still provide the most enthusiastic support, but even this is limited to an older generation.
What the ‘Campaign for the Inclusion and Recognition of Multiplicity and Dissociation’ does manage to do is ensure that the whole SRA/DID subject can’t be buried and dismissed as an unfortunate spasm in US/UK/Canadian etc. social history, to be simply referenced as a footnote. Rather the SRA/DID Recovered Memory Therapy obsessions were (at least in our opinion at Dramatis) the most compelling contemporary social history event in the US since the ending of the Vietnam War and even Watergate, and since the formation of the national Health Service in the UK. Keeping the subject alive and discussed may be the best way to assist those numerous white middle-class and middle-aged ‘survivors’, whilst ensuring another generation of women don’t become prey to an unregulated and greedy psychotherapy profession.
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Jeanette Bartha
/ 10/21/2011Thank you for the information and your insights.
For years, people have been telling me there is no interest in MPD/DID – I not only disagree, but know a steady stream of women are being sucked into this lifestyle as the old theories continue to move slowly around the world.
Patients and their therapists have been driven underground; therapists because of the many malpractice lawsuits filed (mine included) and patients because of the unpopularity and the negativity associated with multiple personality disorder – thus the name change to dissociative identity disorder. Changing the name has made little difference if you listen to how multiples describe themselves and their experiences. The name change seems like a marketing tool that didn’t quite make it.
Many women diagnosed in the 1980s live on the fringes of society and chatter incessantly between themselves on the Internet. They have been existing as multiples and survivors of satanic ritual abuse (SRA) for over 20 years and do not show signs of shedding this lifestyle. Therapists show no interest in changing their treatment even though their patients do not get well and show few, if any, signs of improvement.
As you noted, the original theorists are now in their 70-80s and the next generation of therapists are willingly taking on the challenge to keep the movement alive.
What about the next generation of patients? I don’t know that a movement to keep this debacle alive will lead to better regulation because therapists are clearly conducting the same therapy and patients are clearly believing what they are fed.
I don’t want to believe that the psychotherapy profession is full of greedy people. I don’t want to believe that some are nefarious. But it is getting more difficult not to do so.
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