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Topics BelowForeign Experiences Spiritual Helpers Essence Soul Unpleasant Spiritual Experiences MPD Legal/Prison Issues Diagnosis and Treatment of MPD/DIDRalph B. Allison, M.D.I am a retired board-certified forensic psychiatrist who has been treating dissociators since 1972. With 24 years of clinical experience to look back on, now I can see previously obscure facts about dissociating patients. With this Website, I hope to make these insights available to psychotherapists, attorneys, and dissociated patients in need of understanding a complex and controversial subject. Memories of an Essence Is In Ebook Format"Memories of an Essence: How Humans and Spiritual Beings Put 70 Personalities Back Together Again" is now available on Amazon.com in ebook format, for Kindle ereaders, the iPad, iPod Touch, iPhone, PC, Mac, and Blackberry and Android smartphones. This is the true life story of the woman with the most complicated case of MPD/DID I ever saw and treated. Treatment started at age 28, lasted formally for 3.5 years, and I followed her until her death at age 60. She helped me write her story, and her Essence, named Becky, was my most important informant. Therefore the title is "Memories of an Essence." Becky also introduced me to her supervisors, angels named Faith, Hope & Charity. They asked that I call the Celestial Intelligent Energy or CIE, They provided their job descriptions in the last chapter of the book. The book can be reached at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0078GAK3G. In 2011, I published an ebook version on Amazon.com of "Michael, My Essence: The Origin, Nature, Talents, and Supervisors of One Human's Soul". This tells the lessons I learned from the CIE, who borrowed the bodies of two MPD patients of mine talk to me about what they did here and in Thoughtspace, my name for their universe. When you have finished reading "Minds In Many Pieces", and "Memories of an Essence" read "Michael, My Essence". That will complete your education in this area. - Posted by Ralph B. Allison, M.D. Minds In Many Pieces" in Kindle FormatMy first book, "Minds In Many Pieces", is now available for Kindle's e-book readers from Amazon.com. So, if you own a Kindle E-Book Reader, you can download your very own copy of this story of how I first met multiples with Inner Self Helpers in Santa Cruz, California. This is the first part of the story. The next book I am working on is "Michael, My Esence", which contains the lessons I learned from the spiritual teachers who borrowed the bodies of two of my MPD patients, one in Santa Cruz county and one in Yolo county. After that is in e-book form, I hope to complete "Memories of an Essence", the true story of my most complicated MPD patient, the one in Yolo county. There are the complete stories of what she put me through and who came out to enlighten me. There the lessons from the spiritual teachers I met are laid out in all the detail I could get. Now, if you are a Kindle owner, download "Minds In Many Pieces" by Ralph Allison & Ted Schwarz. Ralph Allison MD - Posted by Ralph B. Allison, M.D. ResourcesSince professional journals change ownership, the "Resources" listed on the website is no longer pointing to journals correctly. Here is a master link which might give information on mental health issues: http://www.datehookup.com/content-the-psychiatry-resource-page.htm - Posted by Ralph B. Allison, M.D. Passing of "Marie"This past week, the 60-year-old lady known as Marie McKenize in "Memories of an Essence" died of natural causes in a local hospital. She had been living in a senior residence and apparently became ill there and was taken to a local hospital. She never fully regained consciousness and died. I do not know the cause of death, but it apparently was a medical disorder. Her only son was notified and will be in charge of all arrangements. I first met Marie when I went to work for the Yolo County Mental Health Services back in 1979. She had only recently signed into the clinic after having been discharged from a Sacramento hospital psychiatric ward to the care of her mother, who managed a motel in Woodland, in nearby Yolo county. The psychiatrist she saw on intake left the agency just before I arrived, and so she was assigned to my caseload. During my second visit with her, an eight-year-old alter-personality came out, a development I did not relish as that time. I had had enough trouble with the controversy I had had with MPD patients during my prior time in Santa Cruz, CA. During the next three years, I treated her to integration of about 60 alter-personalities, since she was the most complicated MPD patient I had ever seen. I saw her twice a week in the clinic office, usually putting her into hypnosis and age regressing her back to the times when the traumas occurred which caused the creation of each major alter-personality. By the end of that three or so years, she had a beneficial result, with her Original Personality returning from Thoughtspace to her body, and taking into it all of the cleansed alters whom I had dealt with during the hours of therapy. When I left Yolo county to move to San Luis Obispo county, she seemed to be integrated, as far as her alters were concerned. She still had a dissociated Essence, named Becky. In addition, her body could be "borrowed" by her three CIE (Celestial Intelligent Energy), named Faith, Hope and Charity. She had known them during her 30 years in Thoughtspace, as they were her "mothers" to whom she expected to return when she "ceased to exist" in Physicalspace. I have to assume that they are now in charge of her welfare back in Thoughtspace, which she thought of as "home." It was through Marie's body that Faith, Hope and Charity frequently used to talk to me and teach me much spiritual information, which I have tried to pass on to my students. Yes, I know that Marie could have been trying to con me and mislead me, but my doubts were repeatedly handled by the CIE and I finally came to accept them as they claimed to be, spiritual beings who have most often been called "angels" by theologians. Becky, her ISH/Essence, told me that her integration with Marie would be the final, spiritual integration needed to complete the total integration process. Becky told me that I would be expected to be present to witness it, as no one had witnessed such an event before. But I never got the invitation to meet with them again. I think I know the reasons. During the past five years or so, Marie had alienated me and everyone else who was on friendly terms with her. She was insulting to her friends, who eventually could not stand to be around her. One friend even told me recently that she met, in Marie, a childish alter-personality. I suspected that there was at least one left over alter-personality whom I had not dealt with in therapy sessions. I suspected that this alter-personality had been created between the ages of 12 and 14, as this was a time when she was hospitalized in a children's psychiatric ward someplace, while being totally catatonic. I was not allowed, by the CIE or ISH, to know anything about what happened then, since, if Marie knew about it, she would totally freak out and become catatonic and nonfunctional as an adult. But it is reasonable to assume that she created at least one angry alter-personality during this two-year time, which had to come out sometime later. Its time to come out was in the last five years of her life. Since I had been taught that any nonintegrated MPD patient who died would go through a spontaneous integration of all personalities, I assume that is what happened to Marie this past week in the hospital. She was reported by the nurses to be yelling "help me" while in a semicoma, and she was in bed for several days before she died. Obviously I do not expect to get any report of what was going on in her mind during that time, but my guess is that the final resolutions of her internal conflicts were being handled by her ISH, Becky, and the CIE, Faith, Hope and Charity. Now she has returned to her favorite home, Thoughtspace, where she had already spent 30 years of her lifetime in this incarnation. She now will be prepared for her next incarnation, whatever that might be. - Posted by Ralph B. Allison, M.D. Jean-Luis Predicts the FutureIn several of the past few years, I have visited my Japanese friend, Dr. Norio “Woosie” Sanjoh, an OB/GYN doctor in Shinjo City, in Yamagata Prefecture. He had again invited me to visit during the annual Matsuri Festival. As noted in my manuscript, “Michael, My Essence”, Woosie and I have a long history of being reincarnated together. My Essence, Michael, and his Essence, Jean-Luis, were the best of friends in ancient Rome, in about 100 B.C., when they were both executed for treason in Rome, and buried together. Today, Jean-Luis still talks to Woosie and provides him guidance. I have sometimes been surprised at the remarks Jean-Luis makes when Woosie “talks” to him. On August 21, 2008, Woosie sent me an e-mail from Japan. I had had to cancel my planned trip to Japan to be with him and his family during the Matsuri Festival because of medical problems. He wrote, “According to weather forecast, it will be rain around Matsuri. We have had 5 days straight rainy days. And more rainy days until next Thursday. Weather CIE is not on our side this year.” He later reported that it rained continually during the Matsuri Festival week, so it would have be quite a wet week to visit, had I actually gone there. He also wrote, “Saying about the CIE, I have heard of that aircraft crash in Spain. There were so many deaths due to that. Do they require more lives in Thoughtspace? Recently, Jean-Luis is telling me that several disasters will happen since the CIE decided to do so. So we will have more typhoons here and hard rain and earthquakes. In US, you will have very hard hurricanes attacking mainland. I wonder why they do this and would like to know the reason, to understand. But Jean-Luis doesn’t know that.” Since that note came, CNN has been busy telling us all the terrible things that have been happening here in the USA. First, there was another hurricane which emptied out New Orleans. Next, a hurricane came on shore at Galveston, Texas, destroying most of the town, and hitting Houston, with massive floods throughout the state and elsewhere. Then a passenger train hit a freight train in Simi Valley, north of L.A. killing many passengers. Then, to top it all off, the US banking system started collapsing last weekend, with the stock market on a roller coaster and our Treasury Secretary trying to figure out how to keep the financial system together. So it seemed to me that Jean-Luis was predicting disasters correctly. I sent Woosie another question as to why this might be happening, according to Jean-Luis, and on September 19, 2008, he sent me this answer: “Again, Jean-Luis told me that the next 1-2 years are the years of con men. After ruined mega-banks and security companies, con men will appear to take money and confidentials from people and authority. So the world would enter more chaotic society. Typhoons and hurricanes are only the beginning. Severe winter would affect the East Coast of the US, and dry weather would make more wildfires on the West Coast. Japan will have severe rain and hard blizzards. In the winter, in France, vines are affected and there are no more great wines. In China, there must be heightening of distrust among people and more emotion in the western part and near Tibet. All the people would lose their confidence in things that are trustworthy, so con men are rising. I am afraid if Jean-Luis includes the US president and Japanese Prime Minister in this. [Here in Japan] economy is still going down. Oil is expensive. It affects the price of whole things. Depressed people are coming to my outpatient clinic every day. Police chief told me yesterday that indiscriminate killings are very often these days. So the CIE turned their steering wheel to something awful in this world. They might think that humans should sink until we notice something about the warning from the CIE.” As to the lack of confidence in China, they are now dealing with contaminated baby food and milk, and thousands of parents are frightened and anxious. We have daily reports of more suicide bombings in several countries as the “War Against Terrorism” keeps going on many fronts. I have never had much patience with Doomsday Prophets, but the first message from Jean-Luis came before the worst several weeks I can remember in US history, since the Great Depression. I was born in 1931, when the US was still in the Depression, and our bankers know what needs to be done to prevent a repeat of that catastrophe. But the Weather CIE seem to be very busy this season, also, but the human reaction in New Orleans was much better than during Katrina a couple of years ago. So we are learning to work together when we have to. We are also in the middle of a tight-fought Presidential election campaign, where there is much more interest in the result then often exists. Having talked to the CIE (Faith, Hope and Charity) many times, I know they can manipulate all this to happen, in the hope that we human beings will start being cooperative with each other, will look after one another, and will forgo personal greed and ambition for a greater good. The CIE will not give us much choice in these matters. - Posted by Ralph B. Allison, M.D. Review of a New Version of the Movie "Sybil"This movie review appeared in Newsweek of June 9, 2008. It is about a remake of the movie “Sybil” which is based on the book of the same name. In reading the book carefully, I found no evidence that those “other selves” which the heroine created in her early childhood were alter-personalities. They were most likely IIC (Internalized Imaginary Companions), with some of them being “older” than the patient herself. Therefore I feel she used her “emotional imagination” to create entities who could help her cope with her schizophrenic mother. She had no evidence of a dissociated ISH, either. Therefore I disagree with any diagnosis of DID, or MPD, and I have always been unhappy that she has been considered a prototype of a “multiple” all these years. To have a movie apparently this bad produced about her gives a disservice to all those patients who really do have one of the dissociative disorders. Ralph Allison, MD
The Return Of 'Sybil' Hysteria is a woman's problem," says a brutish male colleague of Dr. Cornelia Wilbur ( Jessica Lange), the psychologist treating the main character in the CBS remake of "Sybil." My hysterical laughter during most of the film is proof that it's a man's problem, too. I'm not an insensitive guy. I recognize the horror in the story of Shirley Ardell Mason, the woman whose personality fractured into 15 parts as a result of merciless childhood sexual abuse (assuming the story is true; both the diagnosis and the abuse are still under debate). But it would be difficult to intentionally match the unintended comic value of the scene in which Sybil (Tammy Blanchard) rebuffs her new beau, Ramon, after slipping into one of her alters, a boy named Sid. "Guys don't sleep with other guys!" says Sid. "Of course not," says Ramon, both writing off the comment as a non sequitur and failing to realize that his girlfriend's voice just dropped an octave. "Sybil" has the infectious scrappiness of a community-theater troupe, one that isn't that great but has enough conviction to make up for its lack of self-awareness. But this new "Sybil" can't possibly have the same impact as the 1976 original, for which Sally Field won an Emmy, because the made-for-TV movie has a reputation that precedes it. The term "made for TV" has become shorthand for hammy acting and frugal production values, which is why the glossy, competent original TV movies of today are labeled "television events." The made-for-TV movie served a distinct purpose back when entertainment choices were few. They provided a way for families to have a night at the movies without the hassle and expense of going to a theater. Later they became topical, portraying the hot-button issues of the day, like 1983's hugely watched "The Day After," which depicted the eruption of nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union. Now a movie night at home is as easy as opening the mailbox. And Dick Wolf, between his three "Law & Order" franchises, has the "ripped from today's headlines" market cornered. (This season's premiere of "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" featured an appearance by Cynthia Nixon as a woman who—get this—fakes having multiple personalities.) Still, there's something charming about the made-for-TV movie, something adorable in its earnestness, something humorous in its humorlessness. This is why Lifetime and the Hallmark Channel have built brands around them; these movies are the purest form of guilty pleasure. And while I wouldn't watch "Sybil" a second time, it was raucous, nostalgic fun. I could say it's the worst movie I've seen in some time, but I'd prefer to say it's the best at being not good. - Posted by Ralph B. Allison, M.D. Life PlansOne of my patients from my early days of practice was in a crisis mode recently. To find out why, she went into a light trance and asked the question of her Essence. Here is the answer she received: "You chose for this lifetime the theme of Emotionality, and you chose to be born into a family where this would be virtually unacceptable. You wanted to be challenged although you have fought the challenges all your life. You are very quick to point out when you have been 'hurt' but not so quick to take the responsibility for the many times you hurt others, others who loved you very much. In order to work with the theme of Emotionality, you had to be born highly sensitive and intuitive, even psychic. You are now asking why you turn anger inward, assuming that someone else caused the anger when all the time you are angry at yourself. Your life is winding down now. It is time to stop this intense quest and just BE. When you return to the spiritual world, you will understand that there is no good or bad energy -- it is all simply energy. The Creator wanted to know more of Itself and thus exploded outwardly, and each human being is basically on a 'fact finding mission of exploration.' You may decide not to come back to this world, or you might decide to just take a long rest and then come back because there is much of physical life, especially Nature and Relationships, which you will probably wish to experience again. There is nothing to fear, there is no separation, you are never alone -- whether here or there. Be gentle with yourself now." - Posted by Ralph B. Allison, M.D. Neurophysiology of Belief ChangeThis report was printed in the April 2008 UCLA Magazine. What is interesting is the finding that a change in a person’s belief system seems to also make a change in his neurophysiology, which seems to lock the belief system in place. It is a much more complicated change than “just changing your mind” which implies only a psychological shift of ideas MAKING BELIEFShortly before Sam Harris became a New York Times best-selling author, he was a UCLA doctoral student in neuroscience, a mere dissertation away from his Ph.D. But in 2004, Harris took some time off to write The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason. The book sold wildly and Harris was anointed a leader of America's atheist awakening. After writing another bestseller, Letter to a Christian Nation, and traveling the speaker circuit, Harris returned last fall to his doctoral research. His latest writings were published this January, not in a book but in the scholarly Annals of Neurology, and the subject wasn't faith but research into the physiological distinctions between belief and disbelief. The study tested the hypothesis that belief "might have a functional localization in the brain and the design of the study was to isolate such regions," explains Mark S. Cohen, Harris' thesis adviser and professor of psychiatry at the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, who co-authored the study with Harris and Sameer Sheth Ph.D. '03, M.D. '05 of Massachusetts General Hospital. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, the scientists found that a region of the brain involved in belief, disbelief and uncertainty acted differently depending on subjects' acceptance of statements they were given while inside the machine. A portion of the brain called the ventromedial prefrontal cortex appeared to be at least partly responsible for discerning belief of all kinds, whether it's "a personal God exists as described in the Bible" or "George Bush is president of the United States." "It has no relevance to the question of whether or not there is a God," Harris says of the findings. "Even if we had a perfect belief detector, we still can't tell you what is true in the world. You put somebody in the scanner who believes Elvis is still alive, and all we will be able to tell you is, 'Yes, he does believe Elvis is still alive.'” Still, Cohen observes, "This study demonstrates convincingly that fMRI has the power and sensitivity to probe levels of human cognition that subjects may not be conscious of." In the planning stages a follow-up study to explore differences in neurological activities between those who believe in God and those who don't, with non-believers as the control group. "If you are given a proposition you truly don’t believe, it is just mere words," Harris concludes. "The moment you give them credence a complete transformation of your neurology and psychology and physiology occurs. Belief is the hinge upon which the door to behavior and emotion swings." — Brad A. Greenberg '04 - Posted by Ralph B. Allison, M.D. Dear Abby's Advice on Marriage to a MultipleThe following letters appeared in today's Tribune of April 2, 2008 (San Luis Obispo, CA) Any comments are welcome. DEAR ABBY ADVICEDaughter lauds mom's work to integrate selvesDear Abby: I was offended by your response to "True Love Texan" (Jan. 18) when he asked about loving a woman with multiple personality disorder. MPD is also known as Dissociative Identity Disorder. Individuals with DID have survived severe childhood abuse. The way they coped was to split into different personalities. DID can be treated through intense psychotherapy, which attempts to integrate the personalities into one. A loving relationship is possible with people who have DID. My mother is an example. She has DID due to extreme childhood ritual and sexual abuse. She's the most amazing and resilient woman I have ever known, and I am proud to be her daughter. My father has been married to her for 35 years and has supported her unconditionally. It can work! Please educate your readers and provide some useful information about the courageous people who live with DID. — Proud of Mom in Pennsylvania Dear Proud of Mom: I received a slew of mail about this. My response to "True Love Texan" was not meant to minimize the seriousness of Dissociative Identity Disorder. The following responses offer personal insights meant to support him as well as provide information about this sensitive topic. Read on: Dear Abby: Telling that Texan to be certain that he loves every one of the multiple personalities may not be possible. However, it is possible to have a successful marriage with a person who has DID. My husband and I will celebrate our 20th anniversary this summer, and he is a multiple. We knew about some of his personalities when we began dating, but others have surfaced as the years went on. It has not been easy, and I have had to deal with different folks coming out at awkward times. But as my husband said, "Your life will never be boring if you marry me," and he was right. — Wife to One of Many in Vancouver, Wash. Dear Abby: I know from firsthand experiences that all the love, devotion and loyalty may never be enough when dealing with a person with DID. Instead of being a partner, spouse or equal, I became my wife's caregiver, peacemaker and sometimes a target. Nothing was ever easy; I could not depend on anything going smoothly or without incident. After 13 years of turmoil and uncertainty, I had to leave. A serious illness gave me no choice but to take care of myself for a change. I hope "True Love Texan" will heed the warnings of his friends and understand the gravity of this illness before he makes a lifetime commitment. — Wiser in California Dear Abby: When a child is denied "normal" defenses and abused by those who are responsible for providing safety, some children do the most sane thing possible. They retreat into their own minds to a place of safety. We choose to call this by a new term, Multiple Personality Gift (MPG). As long as the woman is in counseling, and "True Love Texan" is on board with the counseling, there is no reason they cannot have a good and productive life together – Adoptive Mom in New York - Posted by Ralph B. Allison, M.D. Adult Children of Parents with MPD/DIDIt has been 36 years since I met and treated my first patient with MPD, Janette, whose story is in chapter two of Minds In Many Pieces. A month ago, I received an e-mail from her daughter, who was a preschooler at the time I treated her mother in Santa Cruz. She is now in her late thirties, with her own family, and still involved with her mother, who is still dissociated. From what I get with her, Janette is one of those women who was severely abused so early in life (before the age of six months) that she can never become integrated. Her Original Personality is too immature to ever be able to return to her own body and integrate with all the alter-personalities who have run it ever since. Her body is literally being run by a committee of alter-personalities. Her daughter has been through her own experiences, as a result of being born to a “multiple” and her husband, who had his own problems. But now this daughter of Janette, whom I will call “June”, is interested in bringing her story to light and meeting other adult children of parents who had MPD or DID. (Remember that I have my own definitions of these two diagnostic labels.) I am putting this out so that if any other children of parents with MPD/DID want to communicate with June and do what they can to help each other cope with the current demands of society, they can do so, through me via ralfalison@charter.net. As far as I know there has been no research on the effects on the children of such patients, but now enough time has passed from the time I was doing therapy for some of them to show what has come of them. I have had some acquaintance with several adult children of my former MPD patients. One daughter followed the paths of her mother’s worst alters and became an alcoholic prostitute. Two sons have done well vocationally, but neither of them have married. Below is the letter June wrote to a daughter of a multiple who recently contacted me for some supportive resources. “Hi, You do not know me but we have something in common...we are both daughters of MPD mothers. I am sure you have had an interesting life. I am currently researching the resources available for family members about MPD. “My take on it is this: My mom is one of the most effective teachers in my life. Because of who she is, I have learned courage, spirituality, strength, patience, and faith. Of course, this was all learned the hard way, but nonetheless it has helped to shape me into a better person today. “As a daughter I have had to be the mom at times, the confidant, the counselor (as best as I could for a child’s understanding), Mom's little helper, the big sister. We (you and I), too, wear many hats and have had to learn to roll with the punches. There have been times in my life where I felt that I could not bear things, but I managed to hang on. Suicide was never an option for me, but my mind went there a few times as I had my lowest moments. There was frustration, anger (why can't I just be a kid?), added responsibility in the home, bleak days (Mom would sleep for days on end), confusion about my role in my family, boundary issues and just plain confusion!
‘Mom, don't you remember that?’ “There is so much to share. There are bad memories, good memories, funny memories, paranormal memories, but my mom will not remember them all. Sometimes I tell her things, and she looks at me as if I do not know what I am talking about. Sometimes she speaks in different languages, and we cannot converse with each other. Those situations, looking back, were kind of comical.
“Life was nor is boring! I am sure you understand.” When I asked June if she was willing that I put in my blog what she had written, so that we could find other adult children of MPD parents, she replied:
“Dr. Allison, “There are things that happened to me as a child, young adult that I am still putting together. Things have begun to make sense to me. “There are dynamics that influenced me as a child that have had long term effects. For instance, I learned at a very young age that I could leave my body and come back, as I was abused by my father. I did not get my memories back until I was 36 – the big year of change for me. I learned to shut down my emotions in order to survive. I did not have a stable childhood where I could learn to live with my past. We moved often, and I learned to let go of friendships instead of forming long term bonds with others. It affected me to the point of being extremely depressed for not being able to have some sort of stability with others. In my twenties, I felt as if I would become like my mother. I was in a negative and emotionally abusive marriage. I felt that the only thing keeping me alive – suicide was not an option – was the fact that I was a mom, and I did not want the cycle to continue with my son. My son became my reason for living, and that is what I focused on to get through the hard times. “The hardest part for me to figure out in my life was how to open up and truly love myself so I could love others. The love was hidden deep within me, and I always had it, but I did forget that it was there. “My guides have always been with me. Even as a child when my mom was hospitalized, I would cry to myself and wonder if I would ever feel safe. Then I would hear the comforting voice of a man say to me, "Everything is going to be okay." I can remember hearing the voice as early as four years old. I thought it was Jesus speaking directly to me. It was audible and real, and, each time I heard the comforting voice, I saw bright pastel colors, and I felt immediately better. I have sketched the vision and the colors and gave it a title, "The Child" sketched Sept. 1, 2003. On the back of the drawing I wrote: "Love is the essence of art". Thus began my journey to self love and acceptance. “My brother did not fare as well as I did. He is schizophrenic (according to many psych evaluations) and borderline sociopath. The cycle did not end for him unfortunately. He lost himself at the young age of four, I believe. There have been others living in his body, but the original boy is gone. He, too, endured abuse. We endured it together. We handled it differently. He became involved in drugs at a young age and has served time in prison for making and selling drugs. He writes poetry to express the torment he endured. My hope is that he too can have some sort of healing in this life. “There is so much to share with others – the good, the bad, the ugly, but most of all the hope of breaking the cycle and finding inner peace. “June” Included in June’s writings was a Poem For My Father written on April 28, 2007. I had seen him with her mother during my therapy sessions and only knew it was a precarious marriage which broke up when they moved from Santa Cruz to Texas. Here is that poem she wrote, to her father. “When I was a child and I thought of you, my heart would well up and the sadness was almost more than I could bear. I felt the emptiness inside of you...yet I could not explain where this empathy came from at the time. “I knew that you did not have a childhood and I grieved for you. I knew that you did not have security...and I grieved for you. You were once a little boy who wanted more than anything to just be loved. Where was your love? Why couldn't your father give you what any child deserves? Why were you left to fend yourself? Abused, lonely, deserted... an outcast. How miserable you must have felt. “I imagined your day to day existence...it was mere survival. You wanted to be loved, accepted, and protected. Yet you had none of these things. You didn't even have the basic things that are considered necessary. How embarrassing it must have been for you to have to take your only shower at school because you had no running water. Foraging for whatever food there was, working so hard at such a young age. You tried to protect your mother and sisters from the abuse, yet you couldn't. You must have felt powerless in your youth. You must have lost all respect for women at a young tender age. Where was your mother in all this? Why didn't she make all the madness stop? How truly sad this is. Did the tears ever reach your cheeks? Were you ever allowed to cry? Did you bury your childhood at infancy? My heart aches for your loss. “Your father was truly a miserable, mean person. You saw things that you should have never seen. You experienced things that took your childhood away. I feel your sadness. You couldn't break the cycle. I KNOW your sadness. “I could become bitter and angry myself and take the role of victim. I choose not to. “There is sadness sometimes for what might have been. Yet the darkest days of my life have given me the most growth. I must thank you for the opportunity that you allowed me to grow. I have had to learn to forgive. I have learned to have compassion for those whose shoes I have not walked in. I have learned that my happiness is in my own hands. I am responsible for any and all successes and failures in my life. “You are not a traditional father/teacher in the sense of the word. Yet I will have to say that you have taught me the most in my life.
“May your emptiness fill with love “With love and peace I send this to you.” So, if you are an adult child of a parent who had MPD/DID and you want to make contact with June, the daughter of my first patient with MPD, contact me at ralfalison@charter.net. - Posted by Ralph B. Allison, M.D. Waking Up To Your DreamsThe following article appeared in PARADE of October 28, 2007. HERE'S AN OPEN SECRET: Dreaming isn't really about sleeping; it's about waking up. Dreams wake us up to the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. They can tell us what we need to know and alert us to actions we need to take. Throughout history—from ancient shamans to the Bible to Freud—men and women have been fascinated by dreams and have pondered their meaning. Current research indicates that dreaming has a real, practical function but also that it can spark our imaginations in unexpected ways. Best of all, one doesn't have to be especially "adept" at dreaming: The power of dreams is accessible to everyone. New studies confirm that all of us have dreams—even those who never recall them—every night for 90 minutes to three hours, in four or five cycles. MRI images and PET scans show that specific areas of the brain are triggered at regular intervals, giving us dream imagery. Until recently, many scientists dismissed the idea that there was rich meaning in dreams, believing instead that dreams were initiated by random firings of the brainstem during REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. But evidence has been accumulating that dreams also can originate during other phases of sleep, when the higher visual and emotional centers of the brain are activated. This suggests that our dreams are not strange results of meaningless biological processes. Rather, they are produced by the part of the brain tied to motivation, goals and desires. Dreams may even be related to survival itself. Antti Revonsuo, a psychology professor in Finland, theorizes that dreaming is central to human evolution. "A dream's biological function is to simulate threatening events and to rehearse threat perception and threat avoidance," he explains. That is, our dreams can warn us of challenges ahead and give us a chance to rehearse efficient responses—including getting out of the way. I once dreamed of a car accident on a hill east of Troy, N.Y. Several weeks later, driving on the same hill, I found my view of a curve in the road obscured by a delivery truck ahead. I remembered my dream and slowed almost to a stop—avoiding a head-on collision with an 18-wheeler. DREAMS ALSO CAN ALERT us to dangers that are internal. They may tell us what is going on inside our bodies and what we need to do to stay healthy. Mary Agnes Twomey, a registered nurse in Baltimore, dreamed she'd traveled inside her body and found it was like a boiler room in danger of blowing up. Upon waking, she made a doctor's appointment and learned she had an ulcer that needed treatment. Other people have reported dreams that alerted them to illnesses ranging from breast cancer to heart disease. Whether or not you believe that dreams serve as warnings, studies suggest that they play a critical role in learning and memory. "Dreams allow us to play and experiment with new conditions or find novel solutions," says Richard C. Wilkerson, operations director of the International Association for the Study of Dreams. "They allow us to explore unusual areas of life and practice new behaviors." One fertile source of creativity is the ability to make new and unexpected connections — something we do all the time when we dream. In dreams, "connections are made more easily than in waking, more broadly and loosely," says Dr. Ernest Hartmann, a professor of psychiatry at Tufts University who has written widely on sleep and dreaming. But he adds, "The connections are not random. They are guided by the emotional concerns of the dreamer." In dreams you may gain new insights about personal relationships or develop exciting new ideas. Many artists have experienced this phenomenon: Paul McCartney awoke with the music for the Beatles' hit "Yesterday" in his mind. Architect Frank Gehry has said that his building designs were influenced by his dreams. "The waking mind is thinking inside the box; the dreaming mind is thinking outside the box," explains David Kahn, a professor at Harvard Medical School. This may be why solutions to nagging problems often come to us in dreams. Robyn Johnson, a consultant for nonprofit organizations in Washington state, needed to produce a fund-raiser for a city park. She dreamed that Annie Oakley rode into the park on her horse, urging her to produce a children's storybook to be given to every guest. She followed Oakley's advice, to great success. Not least, dreams can help us deal with emotional hurdles. Marlene Cantor at the May Institute in Massachusetts has discovered recurring themes in the dreams of middle-aged women. One woman dreamed night after night of going to a house that was falling into disrepair. It began to crumble around her, and one night she saw the roof falling in. In another dream, she saw a beautiful young girl run out of the house and into the path of a speeding car. She wept as the girl died in her arms. In sharing these dreams, the woman reflected that the first symbolic dreamscape might express her fears about her aging body. And perhaps in weeping over the young girl's death, she was mourning the death of her younger self. "Most of these women had never really talked to anyone—not family, not even therapists—about what they were feeling," Cantor recalls. "Telling their dreams brought them a tremendous sense of relief, of coming out of silence and solitude." Whether we share our dreams or reflect on them privately, we'd all do well to wake up to their power. Amid the stress and clutter of everyday life, our dreams can help us discover what's most important. Robert Moss is the author of "The Three 'Only' Things: Tapping the Power of Dreams, Coincidence & Imagination."
********************* In my own dealings with dissociated Essences (Inner Self Helpers of MPD patients), they have described to me that they, the ISH, goes during non-dream sleep time into Thoughtspace to confer with their supervisors, the CIE. Then they return to the mind of their charge to give instructions in dreams which the person has just before awakening. Over time, I developed the completely unscientific idea that there are three types of dreams we may have every night. The first dream is left over garbage from the day’s activities, whatever we have been thinking and worrying about. The first dreams after going to sleep are to let us discharge the feelings about those events and “clean out our minds” of them, so we can leave them behind. The second set of dreams happen next, and they are about the older conflicts we may have, the stuff that the Freudian and Jungian analysts love to hear about during psychoanalysis. These can them bubble up to the surface and allow the person to bring them to consciousness and work on their resolution. The third set of dreams are created by the Essence/ISH and they are the instructions for the day ahead. Here is where the answer to some intellectual puzzle will come into consciousness, or a new relationship which was not seen before. Here is where we feel we need to do some specific action after we get up and we are not happy until we get it done and out of the way. When I came out of psychiatric training, both Freudian and Jungian therapist put a great deal of importance in the nature of the dreams of their patients. I was never one who could remember my dreams, so I have not been one to study my own. But they did seem important to many in the field of psychiatry. So I was unhappy when I saw reports that modern students of sleep, those running university sleep labs, had concluded that dreams had no psychological importance, that they were just random firings of the brain. This they determined by waking up sleeping subjects in their labs when they showed signs of dreaming. Now that seemed like the scientific method, go in and break apart the system to see how it really works. But maybe they only saw a few pieces, and not the whole system as it was designed to operate. So I was pleased to see someone coming up with a resurgence in psychological importance of dreams. At least that agrees with what the ISHs have told me time and again. - Posted by Ralph B. Allison, M.D. "Life After Death" in AARP The MagazineIn the Sept/Oct 2007 edition of AARP The Magazine, Bill Newcott writes an article, "Life After Death," resulting from a poll of 1011 people over 50, regarding their beliefs on life after death. Here are some quotes from that article: "[P]eople 50 and over tend to be downright conventional in their basic beliefs; nearly three quarters (73 percent) agree with the statement 'I believe in life after death.' Women are a lot more likely to believe in an afterlife (80 percent) than men (64 percent)." "Believers show general agreement over the choice of destinations in the afterlife, as well: 86 percent say there's a Heaven, while somewhat fewer (70 percent) believe in Hell." "Just 40 percent believe Heaven is 'a place,' while 47 percent say it's a 'state of being.' As for the alternate destination, of those who think Hell exists, 43 percent say it's a 'state of being': 42 percent say it's 'a place'." "Among those with a household income of $75,000 or more per year, 78 percent believe in Heaven -- compared with 90 percentage of those earning $25,000 or less. Similarly, 77 percent of college-educated people think there's a Heaven, compared with 89 percent of those who have a high school diploma or less." "The largest group, 29 percent of those who believe in Heaven, responded that the prerequisite is to 'believe in Jesus Christ.' Twenty-five percent said people who 'are good' get in. Another 10 percent said that people who 'believe in one God' are welcomed into Heaven. Likewise, 10 percent took a come-one, come-all philosophy, saying everyone gets into Heaven. And while 88 percent of people believe they'll be in Heaven after they die, they're not so sure about the rest of us. Those responding said 64 percent of all people get into Heaven." "Forty percent of those who believe in Hell said 'people who are bad' or 'people who have sinned' go there; 17 percent said, 'People who do not believe in Jesus Christ' are condemned to spend their afterlife in Hell." "Twenty-three percent of those responding said they believe in reincarnation." "More than half of those responding reported a belief in spirits or ghosts -- with more women (60 percent) than men (44 percent) agreeing. Boomers are a lot more likely to believe in ghosts (64 percent) when compared with those in their 60s (51 percent) or 70s or older (38 percent). . . . Thirty-eight percent of all those responding to our poll say they have felt a presence, seen something, that they thought might have been a spirit or a ghost." "Nearly one quarter of those responding agreed with the statement 'I believe that when I die, that's the end.'" Now here is how my spiritual teacher, Charity (a spirit), would answer those questions: 1. There is life (i. e. consciousness of the Essence) after physical death. 2. There is what you humans can call Heaven in which we live. It is an interconnected universe to the one you live in. You may call it Thoughtspace if you choose. It has no time or distance, and no physical objects. All communication is by thought. There is no Hell, but we do have two centers for rehabilitation of turned Essences. In one, they may be retrained to be able to be reincarnated when rehabilitated. In the other one, they will be re-educated but will never be allowed to reincarnate. 3. All Essences and Personalities will be housed in our universe (Thoughtspace) when they cease to exist in Physicalspace. Religions are important only to the Personalities, who are in a state of hibernation in Thoughtspace, and it makes no difference what religion they may have practiced. Those with Essences who are willing to continue helping their charges follow and fulfill their life plans will be in a state of training with the CIE, such as Faith and Hope, during their time in Thoughtspace. Religion is of no importance to the Essences. It matters not to Essences what their charges (Personalities) thought about Jesus Christ or any other religious leader. 4. Reincarnation is a fact. Each human will have between 500 and 5,000 lifetimes, in one or another of the existing 11 parallel universes which exist. 5. Spirits exist, as we, the CIE (Faith, Hope & Charity), are spirits who have never had our own physical bodies. However, we can temporarily take over the body of a person, especially one who is highly hypnotizable. But it is also possible for a person who is unexpectedly dying to create a "thoughtform" from psychic energy, which can then exist after the body has deteriorated. That thoughtform is often seen as a ghost who only talks about the events surrounding the sudden death of that person. Also, Essences and we, the CIE, can create what appear to be ghosts or apparitions to someone we wish to influence and teach in that way. 6. When you, Ralph, die (we prefer to use the term "cease to exist"), both your Personality and Essence will go into Thoughtspace. Your Personality will be in hibernation, but your Essence will be in training for your next lifetime. When the proper infant you are to be is born, your Essence+Personality combination will be implanted into the infant when it takes its first breath after delivery. Only when a brain, with its neurohormones, is available, can the Personality start functioning again. The Essence can function without a brain, body or hormones. - Posted by Ralph B. Allison, M.D. "Back From the Dead" in NewsweekThe cover story for the latest NEWSWEEK magazine, 7-23-07, is called "Back From the Dead." The subtitle is "Doctors are reinventing how they treat sudden cardiac arrest, which is fatal 95 percent of the time. A report from the border between life and death." Another subtitle is "Oxygen deprivation is merely the start of a cascade. Dying turns out to be almost as complicated as living." Originally, I had considered copying certain paragraphs and commenting on them, but that appeared too tedious for me. I encourage all of you to read this article, as it does present up-to-date ideas and procedures which should become commonplace in the emergency treatment of people with disorders which can cause sudden death. What I want to comment on are the more philosophical issues that underly the use of any of these techniques and procedures. We, in our culture, have been taught that being alive is the highest value of all, one that supercedes all others. I spent four months of my 12 month internship in emergency rooms, where we were expected to keep alive all who entered there. Fortunately for us interns, there were no magic machines which could bring back to life those who had been severely injured or who suffered major strokes or heart attacks. But this article now shows where we have come to, and doctors are expected to use these machines to resuscitate those who have gone into comas and have no vital signs. Also, in this article, they wonder where the mind goes when the brain is not functioning. There are philosophers, called "physicalists," who believe that all thinking is caused by brain cells, so if brain cells are dead, there can be no thinking by any "thing" called consciousness. Near Death Experiences (NDE) are mentioned as occurring in terminally injured patients who then revived to tell about how they thought while their brains were without oxygen. First, the idea of a "time to die" has been repeatedly mentioned to me by the CIE, my spiritual teachers. They say that each of us has a Life Plan, provided by The Creator, and it includes the conditions for ending this phase of our Master Life Plan. The rest of the Plan will be in future incarnations. So the CIE do not see physical death as something as terrible as our culture does; it is "coming home," at the very least. They are there, in Thoughtspace, to welcome the Essence and Personality of each of us, when our time comes, and they are full of agape love, nothing else. They do not judge us, they do not condemn us, they do not find us failing in any way. What a difference from our society here in Physicalspace! So when the medical staff decides to use extraordinary means to keep a body alive, is that always wise? Nothing in this world is "always," so the answer has to be "no." There are some times when the doctor's Essence will contact the patient's Essence and get the message that it is OK, even mandatory, for this patient to die at this time, in this place. Every doctor who has worked with dying patients in the ER knows when this has happened. The doctor may feel stressed by not being able to revive this man or woman, but inside he or she knows there is no point in being heroic and expensive about it. The proper time to "cease to exist" (as the CIE call dying) has come for this man or woman. Only a doctor with an ego problem will get distressed about what appears inevitable to others, a doctor who feels like a failure if his patient dies. Such doctors exist, and they are the bane of existence for hospice nurses taking care of their patients. Another question posed is - where is the mind of the patient during the coma? Here I refer to my work with dissociated patients, whose Essences have separated from their Personalities. The Essence has no emotions at all and claims to be able to exist and communicate by thought when out of the body, visiting its "supervisory CIE" in Thoughtspace, which it does every night during sleep. It can also be aware of the surroundings of the person when the sensory organs, such as eyes and ears, are not working properly. This ensures the safety and survival of that person. The Personality is another matter, however. Since it operates with emotions, it must be able to use the neurohormones and sex hormones of the human body. So it cannot function if the physical organism is not functioning properly. When the body "ceases to exist", I envision the Personality as going into a state of hibernation until it is implanted into a new body which is born of a new mother in the next incarnation. Then it can function again, with all the emotions possible to be expressed. But it is a "bundle of Intelligent Energy", so it does exist in a latent form between physical lives, in my opinion. It just cannot usually express itself during its time out of the body. As with everything I say on this subject, there are exceptions to this rule. In the case of Marie, my former MPD patient, her Original Personality dissociated from her Essence at the age of six months, when her mother tried to kill her in her crib. Her Essence, Becky, then sent Marie's Original Personality off to Thoughtspace to be "raised" by the CIE, Faith, Hope & Charity. Marie remembers those 30 years quite well. She reports that she never, during that time, experienced any emotions, as so she was always calm and peaceful, being filled with the agape love of her "mothers." Only when she returned to her physical body, following my therapy, did she have the capacity to feel fear, jealousy, anger, lust, etc. It took having a body to allow her to experience those very human feelings. They do not exist in the absence of the body, it seems. Nothing I say here should be understood to stand in the way of trying to resuscitate anyone who comes to the attention of trained medical staff. We outsiders do not know which one of them is meant to be saved and which one of them is meant to "cease to exist." Only the patient's Essence knows that fact. But if we humans then interfere in what is planned by The Creator for their future fate, another chain of events is brought into play, with some results we would rather not see. Each Essence has been trained to deal with expected events. But if a person meant to die is kept alive on life support machines, the Essence simply has no idea of what it is supposed to do. During coma periods, it will go to Thoughtspace to consult with its CIE, and then will do its best to be of help to its "charge." But it can become quite dissatisfied with the status quo and develop a negative attitude. In its next lifetime, it can more easily become a "turned Essence" and create a sociopathic individual, a habitual criminal. We certainly do not need more of those in coming generations. - Posted by Ralph B. Allison, M.D. Jekyll & Hyde on stageThis past Sunday afternoon, I attended the live stage performance of "Jeykll & Hyde" at the Clark Center for the Performing Arts in Arroyo Grande, CA, produced by Chameleon Productions, an apt title for this performance. The story, by Robert Louis Stevenson, is a classic story of the duality of good and evil in human beings. While it is fiction, I have learned that scriptwriters and other artists have often understood human nature better than we psychiatrists and other mental health professionals. This story is NOT about a case of MPD or DID, but is one which is based on the possibility of an evil psychic entity being created by the ingestion of a powerful chemical. Personally, I don't know if there is any chemical which can do what is shown in this play all by itself, but the idea is a powerful one to make us think seriously about the subject. Since I had not read this story before, or seen the play or movie, I watched the drama unfold, with powerful stage settings and magnificent vocal renditions. The lead character is a medical doctor named Dr. Henry Jekell, who is doing research in a conservative hospital. The program states, "Convinced the cure for his father's mental illness lies in the separation of man's evil nature from his good, Dr. Henry Jekyll unwittingly unleashes his own dark side, wreaking havoc in the streets of late 19th century London as the savage, maniacal Edward Hyde." Dr. Jeckell goes before the Board of Governors of St. Jude's Hospital to plead for permission to use a human subject in his experiment. He has concocted a chemical which he thinks will separate the evil self from the good self in a human, and thus he might remove the evil from the good, benefiting all mankind. The Board turns him down and he then decides to secretly use himself as the human subject. [For those who are interested in the methods of pharmacological research, this is a major error in procedure. To do a safe experiment, one must have three persons involved in the experiment (or in the religious ritual, or in medical treatment). One is the person to take the drug, one who can be able to report on the effects accurately. The next person must be the pharmacist or chemist who guarantees a pure drug is being used. The last one is the doctor or experimenter (or religious leader) who decides how much drug to give and is responsible for the safety of the the human subject. In this story, all roles were played by only one man, so failure of the experiment was guaranteed.] At the same time, Dr. Jekyll is engaged to be married to a lovely woman, the daughter of his best sponsor and mentor. He also goes out on the town with his best friend, who is an observer of the events to unfold, and they visit a local watering hole frequented by prostitutes. One of them, Lucy, is most attractive to Dr. Jekyll, as she is the prototypical "prostitute with a soft heart." He gives her his business card in case she ever needs medical help. When he takes the dangerous potion, he loses control of his body and it is taken over by a monstrous Henry Hyde, who loves to kill people. He starts with those on the Board of Governors which turned down Dr. Jekyll's request, and then starts killing off one actor after another. Hyde meets often with Lucy, who fancies herself as one gal who can take care of herself. But Hyde assaults her and she then goes to see Dr. Jekyll for treatment of her bruises. Dr. Jekyll does not have any memory of having been in her bedroom as Edward Hyde, of course. After he treats her wounds, he kisses her before she leaves his laboratory. Lucy then sings a powerful song of how she must be worth something because she has a doctor in love with her. However, at the next visit to her bed by Hyde, he slits Lucy's throat and kills her. Then he has gone way over the edge in just being evil to those who were critical of Dr. Jekyll, and Dr. Jekyll thinks he can control this powerful "killing machine" inside him. He then marries his fiancee, and on his wedding day, he loses control and Hyde takes over in front of all his friends. Hyde then tries to kill his bride, Emma, and a great tussle ensues. Dr. Jekyll's best friend, John, finally shoots Hyde with a pistol Dr. Jekyll had handy for suicide, and he dies in the arms of his bride. The curtain finally comes down for the last time. If anyone is wondering whether or not this is a fictional case of MPD or DID, let me assure them that IT IS NOT. It is more like the case of Ken Bianchi, one of the LA Hillside Stranglers, whom I saw for his own murder trial. Ken was a nice enough guy to have around, but his "Steve Walker" was a killer of prostitutes and those other women he chose to rape and kill. We had quite a intellectual battle as to whether or not he was a "multiple" and my final conclusion was that he was not one. He had not created any real alter-personalities (which are designed for self protection and survival), but he had used his emotional imagination to create Internalized Imaginary Companions or IIC. One of these was created in response to his mother's very odd and irritating behavior toward him, and so wanted to kill woman, after raping them. In this drama, we have no indication of such a bad mental attitude towards women by Dr. Jekyll, so we have no psychological basis for his creating this monster with his own imagination. I can't think of a way any chemical can make de nova a mental entity with desires, goal making abilities, and social attributes of any kind. However, I did see one man for court evaluation who exhibited several different IIC, which he mentally created in childhood because of sexual abuse by his mother and sister. Two of his IIC were woman and two of them were men. But they only came out when he was intoxicated with liquor. When he was in jail and sober, then never showed up. So, if Dr. Jekyll had made an IIC in his boyhood, the chemical he brewed could be an intoxicant which allowed them to show themselves in adulthood. This is what happens with such dissociating drugs as alcohol and sleeping pills. There is also the question of whether or not there is inherent evil in every human being, as is implied in this story. Obviously Carl Jung seemed to think so, as he taught that each of us has a "shadow side." In my multiples, I looked at all kinds of "sides" and never found a "shadow side." I did find a lot of angry alters, who were angry at specific adults in the person's past who had abused them. But is anger the same as being evil? I think not. In my education on how the Essence works with the person's Emotional Self (or ego or personality), the Essence is nonemotional. But it can develop some very bad attitudes, by which it becomes a "turned Essence." Then it can lead the Emotional self into hating innocent people and doing harm to them. An evil entity wants to destroy someone he is angry at, not just yell and scream at them. He may want to destroy their ability to earn a living, or take away what is most valuable to them. This is a whole package of intentions, none of them good to have. It is a lot more than just being angry. Such turned Essences cannot be "unturned" by psychotherapy, which is aimed at the Emotional Self. Only after they leave this mortal coil in death can they be rehabilitated in the other universe I call Thoughtspace. So, in the terms of this story, the death of Dr. Jekyll was the only proper result, when his body had come under the control of something so evil that it succeeded in killing a woman who was kind to him, the prostitute, and then tried to kill Emma, his new wife, who loved him through all of this. There is no way he could have been rehabilitated in this physical world. In Thoughtspace, the forces for good were available, at no cost to him or the state, for as long as all eternity. - Posted by Ralph B. Allison, M.D. "Miracles" on Ophra Winfrey showYesterday, the Ophra Winfrey show had the subject of rescue miracles. She interviewed a number of people on stage who had been involved in life threatening incidents, yet who had come through them alive. As is usual in such experiences, each survivor was now looking at life in a quite different manner than before, taking each day as precious and no longer concerned about material gains in their live. But there was one miracle rescue shown on film which was not accompanied by an interview with the survivor. That incident involved a woman in a car which went into a flooded river. She was alone in the car when it went underwater and a half dozen men then went out to her aid. She had all the windows closed and could not get out. Then there was a picture of one man bringing her up above water, and she was rescued from certain death. Ophra then told us that, when they pulled the car from the river bottom, they found that ALL of the windows were still shut tight. There were no open or broken windows. That was the end of her comment! Since the woman rescued was not there to be interviewed, we viewers have no idea what she perceived as she went from inside the car to outside the car underwater and then to the surface of the water. All we can do is guess at what might have happened. Since I had two reports from my ex-MPD patient, Marie, of similar situations, I will offer a paranormal explanation, which has repeatedly been used on Star Trek -- dematerialization and rematerialization (Beam me up, Scotty!) Yes, I know that scientists have said that any such process with one body would use most of the energy in the physical world, but I am talking about miracles here, which means they violate "natural law." The idea is that the CIE I have met have the ability to dematerialize a person (and the car she was in in my reports), move them from Physicalspace into Thoughtspace, and then rematerialize them again at another location in Physicalspace. They disappear from where they were in our "real world" and then appear again someplace else. That is why I am curious what this woman in the car remembers happening to her. Did she suddenly find herself outside the car, without having penetrated the glass window? We were not informed of this, so we do not know. But I thought it was a most interesting story to see on national TV. - Posted by Ralph B. Allison, M.D. "Intuition" in Scientific American MindIn the current (June/July 2007) edition of Scientific American Mind, there is an article called "The Powers and Perils of Intuition: Understanding the nature of our gut instincts," by David G. Myers. The author is a professor of psychology at Hope College and the author of 15 books, including one on intuition. Since I have written often about how the human Essence is the source of our intuitive knowledge, I was most interested in reading this piece. A quick summary box says this: "Fast Facts "Intuition's Double Edge "1. Cognitive science reveals a two-track human mind, featuring a deliberate, analytical "high road" and an automatic, intuitive "low road." "2. Through life experience we gain intuitive expertise and we learn associations that surface as intuitive feelings. "3. As studies of implicit prejudice and misplaced fears illustrate, unchecked gut feelings can lead us astray." In the text, he quotes psychologist Daniel Kahneman's description of "Track ('System') 1 -- our behind-the-scenes, intuitive mind -- is fast, automatic, effortless, associative, implicit (not available to introspection) and often emotionally charged. Track 2 -- our familiar, conscious (explicit) mind -- is deliberate, sequential and rational, and it requires effort to employ." Under "Intuition's Powers," he lists blindsight, the ability of persons blind because of damage to their visual cortex to be able to "know" when something enters their blind visual field. I have heard the lectures on this at consciousness conferences, where no one knew how it could be true. But I knew that the Essence of the blind individual is there to provide safety first, so the Essence could tell there was something that might be dangerous in that blind area. The person did not have an visual message as to what it was, just that something was there. This seemed to me to be a logical explanation, that the Essence can see without optic nerves and visual brain cortex, because that is what it does to protect the individual from harm. Under "Intuition's Perils," he lists "intuitive prejudice" and "intuitive fears." These are emotional reactions which have been learned, often long ago, and trigger an avoidance response. In my thinking, this is NOT as aspect of Essence functioning, but part of the function of the Personality, a.k.a. emotional self or irrational soul. In the case of my now-grown son, when he was a little boy, sick in bed with the flu, he was fed a meal which included ripe whole tomatoes. When he put a tomato in his mouth, he vomited. Thereafter, he was convinced that he was "allergic" to tomatoes and refused to eat them. He could still eat tomato catsup on his hamburgers, however. But, to him, he was allergic to whole tomatoes. Such a reaction is easy enough to understand, as to his emotional Personality, the association between tomatoes and vomiting was a cause and effect relationship, a common mistake in logic. So here I take issue with the author, for including "associative" and "emotionally charged" as characteristics of Track 1, Intuition. I can see his mistake, since he was not dealing with dissociative people, like I have. In integrated people, the Essence and Personality are closely bonded together, so it is often impossible to know, in laboratory tests, which "part" is doing which tasks. But when they are dissociated, as in MPD/DID, then the Essence (now an ISH) can be seen to have certain tasks to do for the total benefit of the patient. And no ISH is emotional, as the Essence CANNOT have or experience emotions such as fear or prejudice. They are all intellectual, and operate on knowledge and facts of the moment. They also know that tomatoes do not cause vomiting, so they are not involved in such associations and the fears resulting from such an unpleasant experience. So I think we should expand on what these experimental psychologist are saying about the two parts of the mind. Yes, the Essence is automatic, quick, effortless and implicit. It is not associative or emotional. So where do those traits operate? I would propose that they are traits of the other part of the mind, the Personality. But we have to be aware that there are many levels of conscious awareness of such traits of the Personality. Those we are ashamed of, such as prejudice and fear, are relegated to a very low degree of awareness, which has sometimes been called the "subconscious" or other similar words. I know that my MPD patients who had such feelings knew they had them and were not "unconscious" of them. But they were not about to admit them to me, as they feared my disapproval. So they kept quiet about them, which could lead me to mistakenly think they had no such awareness. But they did, and eventually they told me about them. So some traits are very high on the consciousness/awareness scale (those we can brag about) while others are very low on the same scale. Those of us schooled in Freudian terms might call them suppressed, I think, but the words are not as important as the understanding that they are there, and the person does not want others to know that. But intuition, as a function of the Essence, is knowledge, not emotions, and it has no basis in experiential learning. You just "know it." And you are not emotional when you know it, as it is above emotions; it is just there. At the start of the article, there are two examples of persons taking action based on their intuitions. One is considered "good" as it is about a woman who felt there was something wrong about a young man she met when his car broke down. She notified the police, who found his mother dead at home and arrested the son for murder. Fine, that was a good example of intuition which the woman properly paid attention to. The other example is listed as a "peril" of intuition. This involved a pilot of a passenger plane who followed the intuition of the flight controller whose radar was not functioning at the moment. He hit a cargo plane and 71 people died in the collision. Now, I have talked to Charity, my spiritual mentor, about such plane crashes, and she has assured me that the passengers and crew were all due to die that day, as all their Life Plans were complete for this incarnation. Their Essences all knew that they would "cease to exist" today and had kept their assigned Personalities calmed down, while waiting for the crash to happen. They were all due to go into Thoughtspace, where the CIE would prepare them all for reincarnation. This is the view of the CIE. These Essences were coming "home" to be prepared for their next lifetimes. From the point of view of the CIE, this was not a tragedy. Of course, from the human point of view, it was a tragedy. So the CIE do not consider this a hazard of intuition. They had set it up that way, so that the crash would occur on schedule, the CIE's schedule. Quite a different point of view. So I bring this article to your attention. I also appreciate the fact that the Scientific American staff decided to start this magazine a year or so ago. It is also interesting that they say that "Many of the articles in this issue are adapted from articles originally appearing in Gehirn & Geist." I assume that is a German publication, and I have noted many articles written by European psychologists. So the ideas presented are not primarily American products. - Posted by Ralph B. Allison, M.D. Invitation to be on TVYesterday I received an invitation to come to NY and be on an educational/entertainment program, live, to talk about MPD/DID. Since this is all under negotiations, I will not identify the show or producer. But why did she contact me and offer to put on a positive view of the subject? She wrote that she "accidentally" came across my website when researching a completely different subject. After being in this business for a while, I don't believe in accidents anymore. I think Charity steered her to my site, which is something Charity encouraged me to set up. She also steered me to my webmaster, Ernie Hull, who is enthusiastic about the material I have here, so he has been a friend as well as a great webmaster. Now, who is Charity? If you have read much of what is on this website, you will know that she identified herself as a spirit who comes from another universe, which I call Thoughtspace, and she is a supervisor of us humans, through our Essences. (That is her preferred word for soul or spirit.) She communicated through the body of one of my MPD patients in Santa Cruz, CA, first, then through the body of another MPD patient when I moved to Davis, CA. In 1980, Charity asked me if I would be willing to enter into a contract with her. She wanted me to tell everyone that they had an Essence, and that they should listen to it. That was all. In return, she would teach me whatever I wanted to know about her and her fellow spirits, and how they operated here and in Thoughtspace. (I call "here" Physicalspace.) I agreed at the time, and she kept her bargain, giving me many lectures, then experiences, then referrals to books she approved of. But I have been having a hard time keeping my end of the bargain. This website is the best I can do, but I have also had the chance to speak of this material in other countries, such as Japan, Mexico, Germany, Italy and England. But getting good exposure of what seems obvious and simple to me is hard, when the material is "spiritual" and I am supposed to be a member of a "scientific" profession -- Medicine & Psychiatry. They don't like to have papers on spirits I can tell you, so it gets hard to be heard on this subject. That is where Charity has to help me, by steering others, like this interested producer, to my site, and then to me. I do have some ideas on how best to present the material, but she knows what makes good TV. And "talking heads" is not the best idea in TV, you know. We shall see. Another example of Charity's endeavors in this area happened when my partner, June, and I went to LA for the last ISSD convention. While there she had to visit her favorite cousin, Roger, who is in a health care facility. The day we visited was his 80th birthday, and many of his relatives had decided to come and celebrate with him, in the upstairs socializing area. June and I got there in the afternoon, after the birthday cake had been eaten, but most of her relatives were still there. Since it was late, they were drifting off to drive home, and only a few were left when she brought over to meet me one of the younger cousins. She had felt a strong urge (thank you, Charity!) to introduce him to me, and I found out he is a movie script writer by profession. He gets ideas which he then puts into 30 page proposals which go to the producers he deals with. Naturally, I was thrilled by the idea that my stuff might be somehow in a movie, and I told him briefly what I had been into. He told me that he wanted to do something new, and MPD had been done with Sybil already, years ago. So, when I got home, I sent him a review of what I had been up to professionally, and he is now researching my stuff, to see if he can make a proposal that will interest those in positions of power in the movie business. Here again, I could not have done this by myself, as I did not know him, and he had to decide to come to LA county to visit his cousin for his birthday, and he lives in the state of Washington. That is a long way to go, but that is the way Charity gets us together. So, if you are reading this because you somehow ran across my website, sign in and let me know how it happened. I have heard some interesting stories in this vein. - Posted by Ralph B. Allison, M.D. Thoughts of the Day on Spiritual PsychologyHere I plan to write about current events which might be interpreted differently with views taught to me by my spiritual teachers, the CIE. This starts with the recognition that the Essence (a.k.a. soul or spirit) is an active functioning part of every human mind. It is usually totally integrated (a.k.a. alloyed, mixed with) the Personality (a.k.a. ego, irrational soul, emotional self) and we integrated persons are never 100% either way. Some of both is operating at all times we are conscious and relating to the outside world. I will also feel free to comment on how I think the CIE are manipulating us humans to get us to do whatever they want us to do, whether we like it or not. There are many interesting activities going on around the world these days, and our TV news services are busy keeping us informed on a minute-by-minute basis. We are in a period of our development as a civilization where we need to learn a few new things, but they are mostly very old things which have been cast aside for a few centuries. The ancient shamans knew them well, as knowledge of them was essential to the survival of their tribes. Now we have to learn them again, in this new Age of Communication. - Posted by Ralph B. Allison, M.D. |
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