What is MPD? Continued

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      Finding an adept therapist who is familiar with MPD is a difficult task at best. Many therapists who claim to understand MPD still use standard methods of treatment. These methods are drug therapy, aversion therapy and shaming.
      Drugs are ineffective in the treatment of Multiple Personality, for each alter has it's own agenda and it's own peculiar disturbances. Also, it has been documented that alters can have widely varying physiology's.
      Aversion therapy is destructive and abusive, and in the long run can cause more damage to the already damaged individual. Aversion therapy has been used in an attempt to force the individual to remain in one personality, invalidating all the others. What generally occurs is that the alters go back into hiding and more splintering occurs.
      Shaming is one of the major causes of splintering in the first place, and therefore, only exacerbates the condition.
      What is needed, in the treatment of MPD, is a therapist who is willing to recognize and validate each alter. A therapist who is willing to go the extra mile, aware of how demanding and time consuming working with a Multiple is. Such a therapist would have identified and worked on his own issues, developed clear boundaries as well as sense of spirituality. The sense of spirituality is extremely important, because it is only through an inner, spiritual awakening that the Multiple will find the strength to move out of the victim mode, and into healing. As long as the Multiple can blame someone else for their condition healing cannot begin.
      It is important for me to state here that "integration" as it is understood by the majority within the mental health community is a misnomer. It is futile to attempt to stuff all of the alters back into a single personality. That is like trying to teach a pig to sing. Trying to teach a pig to sing is both a waste of time and it annoys the pig. Or, it is like trying to turn a pickle back into a cucumber. Once a pickle, never a cucumber again. Many attempts at total integration which have seemingly succeeded, have eventually proven to be failures. All that occurred was that the alters went back into hiding, only to surface again, after another emotional trauma.
      The only kind of integration that works is assisting the alters to attain co-consciousness. This is done by initiating communication between the alters. This can be accomplished through several means. One is to get each alter to talk to the others. Never mind whether they respond or not. What matters is that an attempt is made to recognize the others as well as be recognized by the others. Another means of initiating communication is to have each of the alters write letters of introduction to one another. One of the most successful means throughwhich to generate co-consciousness is through "reverie", a form of guided relaxation. In this highly relaxed and suggestive state, the therapist can call all of the alters forward and introduce them to one another. Of course, in order to do this, the therapist must spend a great deal of time first developing a high level of trust with each of the alters.

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