Multiples in Tasmania

The following report was sent to me by resident of Tasmania, an island south of the main continent of Australia.

"Hi everyone. My name is Dannii. I am what the world at large calls a ‘multiple’, as found in Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD), which is a bit misleading since I don’t actually have MPD, but rather I am a product of it. By that I mean I am an Alter.

"I was created in late 2000 as an Administrator, during a period of great upheaval and trauma, eventually taking executive control of the body in 2003. If you think of our body as a business that has been declared insolvent, I am the Administrator appointed to run the business until the problems are sorted out and the business gets back to normal trading.

"Within our system there are the usual protectors, rescuers, persecutors, false fronts, etc, but because our primary abusers were Christian zealots and a paedophile priest, we also have a powerful witch and a rather nasty demon called Defer. One might say they were created “to fight fire with fire”. On the subject of fire, we collectively possess psychic abilities such as telekinetic energy with all that implies, as well as an ability to see, though not always communicate with, spirits.

"All up there are 29 of us in the system, though some are fragments, that is, they hold specific and detailed pieces of memory associated with the more horrific aspects of the abuses and nothing else.

"We live on the island of Tasmania, the southern most state in Australia. In Tasmania there are, to my knowledge, some 30 other ‘multiples’, some of whom I know personally, but they are all ‘DID multiples’, meaning they are diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder, whereby the ‘Original’ is still in charge. I don’t know how many ‘multiples’ there are Australia-wide, be they MPD or DID, but there are a number of organisations and support groups operating in different regions, so there must be some at least.

"Finding a suitable therapist, be they a counsellor, psychologist or psychiatrist, is very difficult since, a) they tend to congregate in the bigger coastal cities, b) there are so very few of them versed in dissociative disorders, and c) the greater majority seem to be of the opinion that MPD/DID doesn’t actually exist. This element seem to believe that MPD/DID can be explained as Schizophrenia, Bipolar or Borderline Personality Disorder!

"As an example of what I mean, I was for a time seeing a particular psychiatrist privately, but in order to be able to access government mental health services, I had to have a government psychologist as a case manager. My psychiatrist dealt with the MPD issues, whilst my psychologist, who accepted the MPD label though she didn’t properly understand it, taught me living and coping skills over and above those I had been programmed with. When my psychologist quit her job, her client workload was re-appraised, and shock-horror, the mental health service found they had a ‘multiple’ on their books. I was promptly ‘dumped’ as a client, and later informed by my lawyer that the mental health service could not treat me since technically I didn’t exist. I had no legal recourse since the decision was a clinical one made by a clinician, who incidentally didn’t believe in MPD.

"In contrast, on another occasion, I sought to have a testamentary will made by a solicitor's firm, which, because of the complicated nature of that will, required that I disclose the MPD. Whilst the lawyers accepted I was a ‘multiple’ and part of a MPD system, I was informed that I could not make a will because under Australian Law, I lacked what they called ‘legal personality’, i.e. I was not ‘born of the womb’, therefore I was declared, by them, to be a non-legal entity.

"In 2006, in an effort to create a legal precedent under State Law, I challenged the jurisdiction of the local state court, claiming the Law could not hear my case, let alone convict me, since it held no jurisdiction over me because I lacked ‘legal personality’ as defined by Australian Law. The Judge promptly dismissed the case on ‘discretionary grounds’ since with no precedent to guide him, the Judge was reluctant to initiate one, so did the next best thing and ignored the whole episode by dismissing the case!

"Interestingly, we have found that, in Tasmania at least, if one claims to be a multiple, particularly in regard to the Law, one is immediately considered to be ‘non compos mentis’, i.e. of unsound mind! "nos turba sumus ~ we are a multitude"

Foreign Experiences

This view of the world which I learned about in treating patients with MPD/DID is not the American Way, of course. Therefore, I found it advisable to attend professional meeting of hypnosis experts around the world. I found a willing publisher for my articles in Sweden. My first book was published in Japanese, and I have lectured extensively there. I have presented this material in Germany, Italy, England, Mexico and Canada as well. I went to Russia with a group of fellow therapists and found people who had been the children left after the Nazis killed half the people in Leningrad during WWII. They were now the adult professors but could not study child abuse issues, since they were the children who survived World War II in Russia.

I did find that my therapy plan for multiples worked as well in other countries as it did for me in the USA. So I have no hesitation in recommending my methods to those in other countries. MPD and DID, by my definitions, are not North American mental disorders, as some skeptics have claimed. They are post-traumatic emotional stress disorders and can happen to any susceptible person so traumatized in any county or culture.