“I Just Really Love My Spirit”: A Rhetorical Inquiry into Dissociative Identity Disorder

Abstract

Treatment for Dissociative Identity Disorder aims to integrate diverse narratives into a coherent whole. However, no compelling reason exists to privilege a cohesive narrative; in fact, treatment may at times introduce false memories in an attempt to construct such a narrative. This essay critically examines dominant conceptions of memory and consciousness based on logic and coherence in order to argue for the value and validity of fragmented narratives as a legitimate rhetoric.

Notes

1. ¹I thank Kim Hensley-Owens, RR reviewers Michael Zerbe and Fred Reynolds and editor Theresa Enos for their generative and helpful feedback.

2. ²The DSM-V defines “alters” as “two or more distinct personality parts.”

3. ³Mairi might be misremembering the age of this event, as a seven-month-old is not likely to be able to walk yet.

4. ⁴Sophistic rhetorics, as Susan Jarratt’s work has demonstrated, allow for the possibility of relative and multiple truths, for temporal fluidity, and for acceptance of tentative conclusions to do with the past and its recollections and how these memories serve as the mechanisms through which one might piece together a fluid identity. Gorgias’s well-known Encomium to Helen is his attempt to make the weaker argument the stronger via rhetorical savvy born of relative truth.

5. ⁵For a compelling example, see Debbie Nathan’s Sybil Exposed: The Extraordinary Story Behind the Famous Multiple Personality Case.

6. ⁶This line of reasoning is not meant to negate the positive move toward more trauma sufferers sharing their experiences and fighting for justice. Instead, I am emphasizing the complexity of trauma and its consequences over and against simplified accounts of injury and injustice.

7. ⁷This is not to imply, of course, that many people who’d reported childhood sexual abuse during this decade did not, in fact, experience abuse of some form or another. Instead, I mean to point out that there were researchers concerned with overdiagnosis of this particular cause of psychic distress.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Cathryn Molloy

Cathryn Molloy is Assistant Professor in James Madison University’s School of Writing, Rhetoric and Technical Communication. She welcomes any feedback to email: [email protected].