I'm not sure what he could say with respect to alleviating my fears on the screaming. I guess I just keep coming back to this: I don't want to do things that way. I want to work on integrating them into my conscious awareness, sure. I don't want to work on losing even more time than I am already in order for him to build up a relationship with them and become some kind of gateway (or obstruction?) between me and them. I'm not disputing that some people present for therapy and switch. I'm not disputing that if this is how people present then there need to be treatments for them that involve the therapist dealing with whoever happens to present in therapy. What I'm disputing, however, is the utility of encouraging switching. For me, getting better is about improving my communication with them and working towards integrating / incorporating them into my conscious experience. I think that his becoming some kind of gateway between me and them will result in their communicating with me less and communicating with him more. I think that is counter-productive for me given where I'm at (with fairly good communication). Even more than that I'm wary of the line of therapy which involves the therapist encouraging switching because IMHO it is little strategies like that that... encourage switching / decreases in functioning. IMHO that is an example of people being in the grip of a theory and flouting common sense. Until the empirical data shows my way to be ineffective (or less effective than their way) i'd like to try things my way.

All of this will be made irrelevant if i switch, i suppose. i must be careful not to make this a matter of principle...

Ian Hacking's book "Multiple Personality and the Sciences of Memory" is really interesting. Really very interesting. He tracks a variety of phenomena through history... Doubling (double consciousness), Dissociative Fuge (gained in popularity due to the rise of tourism and the necessity of identity cards in France)... Change in theoretical perspective so theorists thought that doubling was unlikely and multiplicity was likely... Rise in Multiple Personality Disorder... How the phenomena came to be associated with memory and with sexual abuse... Rise in prevalence of reports of sexual abuse...

Basically... The phenomena evolves in time in light of theoretical assumptions, society, etc etc etc. People conform to the stereotype (as the apply the diagnostic stereotype to themself) and people rebel against the stereotype (which can result in a new edition of the DSM as the manual attempts to keep up with evolving symptomology in order to keep their descriptions accurate).

One thing I'm wary of: Positing trauma of 'objectively sickening severity' as a causal mechanism (if clients and clinicians both think the only acceptable explanation for their distress is abuse then this will cause a rise in the abuse that is reported). There are lots of things like that...

I'm fairly keen to try and break out of the stereotype and...

Get better.

I want to get better dammit.

And I'm not sure how much the 'standard line' is likely to help with that... Not so sure...

I've only been seeing him since the end of October of last year. And we have had a break of about a month. So not long in the grand scheme of things, I guess. I really want... I don't expect I'll tell him this anytime soon... But I really want... To get well enough to do a proper course of analysis. I'd like to train to be one one day... And you need to do a course in order to practice... Some people... End up doing about four or whatever lol. But at the moment... The way things are with me at the moment... I'm probably not well enough to do that. Because I tend to disintegrate / get a little bit psychotic with the free association thing. But thats kinda what I envisage with respect to the getting better. I expect I'll tell him one day. At the moment... Too scared he will laugh at me. I wish I wasn't such a %#@&#! up :-(

But yeah.. I need to... Talk. Talk. Talk to him.