Discussion
So far I challenged the current trend of regarding the identities in DID as something partial and fragmentary which is inconsistent with their clinical manifestations and proposed a new way of looking at them as a whole in their own sense, if not altogether sophisticated and generally furnished with all the component of the sense of self. When we examined the current definition of DID in DSM or ICD, there is ample room for multiple and possibly mutually contradictory understanding of the personalities in DID. We assume that clinicians agree that there is some kind of disruption of identity (DSM-5, ICD-11)in DID, which is cogently reflected on the name of the “dissociative identity disorder”, a diagnostic naming which seems to have gained its citizenship well enough. However, what is the nature of the disruption of identity is nothing but simple and clear. Is it the fact that there are independent identities switching back and forth (and hence, discontinuity in the sense of self), instead of having one, which itself is the problem, at least from observers’ point of view? However, is it really a problem for a person to have more than one mind so long as he is coping with it well? Imagine that there is a population of people who happen to have two or more personalities while possessing a shared body? Some might argue that it is a problem, or “disorder”, but this is equivalent to the state of Siamese twins, a comparison that I already made to the state of DID earlier in this paper. In fact, example of Hensel sisters look quite healthy and normal although they share a single body (Russell, Cohn, 2012). This topic even goes back to the question of whether the condition of DID is an illness or a normal variant.
