How to Fake Integration

"To achieve their vision of our "recovery," this "subjective sense of unity," this "absence of overt behavioral signs of multiplicity," it is necessary for us to force ourselves to learn the complex rules of an a/signing game. We must learn to enunciate an "i" that does not/can not exist. We must present a unity and continuity that is only a farcial/partial representation. We must learn to pretend that we have severed all connection with the "other" in ourselves. We must speak in the binarizations of s/he, i/you, without/within.
To resist this a/signification, this mis/representation, is to place ourselves once again beyond their ability to read us within binarized singularities, to place ourselves subject to their enunciation of the Insane."
- Jenn Paradise, D.I.D. You See Us Fly?

Here are the ISSD standards for determining if integration is occurring. Multiples in a jam with a bad doctor or hospital may be able to save themselves by copying listed behaviors. When you are seeking help, you should always initially present in good faith, of course; but if you have been pushed into unwanted therapy and it is not working out well, or if you have sought help but it just isn't working with this doctor and especially if he's pushing unwanted integration, sometimes all you can do is to pretend to go along with it. Most therapists are looking for certain behavioral cues in your speech and manner, and will watch your behavior carefully, especially during the first few sessions.

Be very careful about choosing to do this. Sometimes what looks like a dud therapeutic relationship turns out to be good, and vice versa. Always assume and present in good faith unless and until you are dead certain that things have taken a bad turn.

"The immediate goal is reintegration of personalities... Wherever possible, treatment should move the patient toward a sense of integrated functioning. Although the therapist often addresses the parts of the mind as if they were separate, the therapeutic work needs to bring about an increased sense of connectedness or relatedness among the different alternate personalities." - Richard Kluft, "Treatment of multiple personality disorder". Psy Clin North Am 1984; 7:9-29

"Fusion occurs when there has been three months of:

Continuity of contemporary memory:
Absence of overt behavioral signs of multiplicity
Subjective sense of unity:
Absence of alter personalities on hypnotic re-exploration
Modification of transference phenomena consistent with bringing together alternate personalities
Clinical evidence that the member's self-representation includes acknowledgement of attitudes and awarenesses which were previously segregated in separate personalities

1. Continuity of contemporary memory: Might be difficult for some groups, depends on communication and/or co-consciousness.

2. This one means "don't act multiple". Choose one or more people to be the "newly integrated" person, and behave as a singlet. Don't talk about the others, always say "I", don't interact with each other where the therapist (or others) can see you. So many of us are used to "singletflage" or "normalflage" hiding in public that this may come fairly easy.

3. This one is a little tougher to figure. I think more than anything else, this means that you should report a feeling of being whole, that rather than dying or going away, the others have united together so closely as to form a kind of gestalt, acting and behaving in complete accord and synchrony. This would make sense with the current psychiatric idea that multiplicity is not a lot of people living in one body, but rather a dissociative delusion in which the 'persons' are actually parts of one should-be-contiguous whole personality.

4. For this one, all but "the newly integrated person" stay away from the front, allowing "the person" to be examined and give all the right answers.

5. This one means that the client gradually ceases to respond to the therapist as if he were a parent -- doesn't have young people coming out calling him Daddy, protective types eyeing him with suspicion, etc. Not all multiple systems do such things, but for ones that do, this is an important thing to stop doing if you want to get out of a bad therapy situation.

6. This, roughly translated, means you should say "I like toast", not "John likes toast". Everything that is usually the province of a particular person in your system must be appropriated for purposes of discussion by the "newly integrated person". Basically what they want the person to do is "own" his or her feelings, preferences and ideas, instead of attributing them to other "parts".

See the ISSD Adult Treatment Guidelines for more

Jay

Astraea's Bookstore... a full line of books on
multiplicity & beyond

All writings by members of House Astraea are COPYRIGHT FREE. Permission to link to, manipulate, publish and/or mention in print (paper, electronic, etc.) any material written by members of House Astraea is granted. Any re-broadcast, reproduction or retransmission of the pictures, descriptions, and accounts of this game without express written consent of Major League Baseball is encouraged.

Back to where you were