hey. yeah, attachment complicates things considerably. i'm not sure on the 'making it up' thing... i guess that relatively objectively i think that the distinction between 'discovery' and 'creation' is fairly senseless. maybe that is because i come down a bit more on the 'creation' side of things, however. in the 'normal' or 'non-pathological' cases too, though. what i mean is that... what a self is is a collection of thoughts, feelings, beliefs, desires, rememberings etc. and what we think, feel, believe, desire, and remember is a narrative activity in the present. Dennett says 'how do i know what i think until i see what i say?' the notion behind this is that instead of there being inner facts about what we believe and desire and have memories etc of that we 'translate' into language and express... what is believed and desired and remembered is made so in the uttering of the speech act (when we speak truely or when it 'seems right'). that isn't so clear... sorry. i just mean to say that i'm not sure how good it is for me to think about them / talk about them a great deal. clarifying / making them distinct. i guess there has to be some kind of middle ground between the post-traumatic model (where there are facts about them prior to therapy - they exist!) and the socio-cognitive model (where there are facts about them prior to therapy - they don't exist!). my middle ground is that... selves just are a narrative construction. i mean really, what did the socio-cognitive theorists mean to be denying the existence of? an immortal cartesial soul? why is the discovery/creation of more than one self any more mysterious than the discovery/creation of one self?

http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/originss.htm

ah. control. i hadn't really thought about that. i guess it is a control issue, huh. about self control, yeah. and (for a. at least) about control of the theraputic situation too. i guess there is a concern that i'm trying to control the situation for defensive reasons rather than good rational reasons. i guess there is a concern that i have these ideas about what treatment should be about for defensive reasons rather than good rational reasons. but you know what? freud built quite a lot into psychoanalysis because of his issues. i don't think this is something that one can completely avoid. just because he built something into psychoanalysis becaue of his issues doesn't necessarily undermine its utility, however. one example of this was the idea that the patient should lie down and not look at Freud. Freud didn't like to be gawped at. His rationale was that patients don't like to be gawped at, however ;-) I don't like to be gawped at so it sounds like a pretty sensible strategy to me. Hard to say whether it is the best strategy or not, however, I guess it depends on the person. I don't know if the way I want to deal with this is the best strategy for me or whether it is a defence because of my control issues. who knows. i guess it is something for me to think about... i think i have good theoretical reasons but who knows...

(i also appreciate that i need to be careful with this because i know we aren't allowed to 'debate the existence' of DID. i'll say that i'm not intending to 'debate the existence' as it is an uncontroversial fact that people do indeed meet criteria for the disorder and i'm certainly not disputing that. but i guess i need to be careful with my thoughts as my saying that i'm not intending to debate often has little effect on the way people interpret me...).