More on Multiple Personality Disorder

From http://skepdic.com/mpd.html

Memory and other aspects of consciousness are said to be divided up among "alters" in the MPD. The number of "alters" identified by various therapists ranges from several to tens to hundreds. There are even some reports of several thousand identities dwelling in one person. There does not seem to be any consensus among therapists as to what an "alter" is. Yet, there is general agreement that the cause of MPD is repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse. The evidence for this claim has been challenged, however, and there are very few reported cases of MPD afflicting children.

Psychologist Nicholas P. Spanos argues that repressed memories of childhood abuse and multiple personality disorder are "rule-governed social constructions established, legitimated, and maintained through social interaction." In short, Spanos argues that most cases of MPD have been created by therapists with the cooperation of their patients and the rest of society. This does not mean that MPD does not exist, but that its origin and development are often, if not most often, explicable without the model of separate but permeable ego-states or "alters" arising out of the ashes of a destroyed "original self."

A rather common view of MPD is given by philosopher Daniel Dennett.
...the evidence is now voluminous that there are not a handful or a hundred but thousands of cases of MPD diagnosed today, and it almost invariably owes its existence to prolonged early childhood abuse, usually sexual, and of sickening severity. Nicholas Humphrey and I investigated MPD several years ago ["Speaking for Our Selves: An Assessment of Multiple Personality Disorder," Raritan, 9, pp. 68-98] and found it to be a complex phenomenon that extends far beyond individual brains and the sufferers.
These children have often been kept in such extraordinary terrifying and confusing circumstances that I am more amazed that they survive psychologically at all than I am that they manage to preserve themselves by a desperate redrawing of their boundaries. What they do, when confronted with overwhelming conflict and pain, is this: They "leave." They create a boundary so that the horror doesn't happen to them; it either happens to no one, or to some other self, better able to sustain its organization under such an onslaught--at least that's what they say they did, as best they recall.

But if thinkers of Dennett's stature accept MPD as something which needs explaining in terms of psychological dynamics limited to the psyche of the abused rather than in terms of social constructs, the task of convincing therapists who treat MPD to accept Spanos' way of thinking is Herculean. How could it be possible that most MPD patients have been created in the therapist's laboratory, so to speak? How could it be possible that so many people, particularly female people [85% of MPD patients are female], could have so many false memories of childhood sexual abuse? How could so many people behave as if their bodies have been invaded by numerous entities or personalities, if they hadn't really been so invaded? How could so many people actually experience past lives under hypnosis, a standard procedure of some therapists who treat MPD? How could the defense mechanism explanation for MPD, in terms of repression of childhood sexual trauma and dissociation, not be correct? How could so many people be so wrong about so much?

to be continued further.