Are Alters Complete Personalities? A LEGO Metaphor

(Summary) Experts on Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) and Other Specified Dissociative Disorder (OSDD) agree: no system contains multiple full personalities—and no single alter is a complete personality on its own. Using metaphors like Lego bricks and a shattered teacup, it becomes clear that fragmentation doesn’t create “more” personality; it divides one original personality into parts. Understanding this concept can reduce confusion, shame, and self-doubt while honoring each part’s experience.

In the previous video, I shared how the structural model of dissociation can explain why experts who study DID and work with clients who have DID say that no system has even a single complete personality, let alone multiple personalities. Now I want to share how it makes sense to me.

For this metaphor, this picture of a pile of Legos represents an individual’s personality at birth. The different pieces in this pile of Legos are the inborn traits and tendencies and parts of the personality that will be shaped by the experiences the person has. There’s no order to this yet, because this is the infant’s personality. Notice that the pieces are not neatly connected to form a unified object. As the baby, toddler, and then child has experiences, these pieces will begin to connect in various ways.

In this picture, you can see some connections have been made between some pieces. Some groups of pieces are much larger than others. Some individual pieces like these might be fragments or parts who are very limited. They may hold a single memory or even a single sensory detail from a memory.

These complicated groups of Legos represent alters like you. The biggest groups of Legos understandably experience themselves as complete personalities. For one thing, they aren’t likely aware of what is missing if they’ve never experienced it. And there are so many different kinds of pieces that are part of these groupings that they can seem complete.

Going back to the Legos, can you see that no alter or park can be a complete personality? That’s because all of the parts in a system form from a finite resource. In this example, it’s that entire pile of LEGOs. So any grouping of Legos that doesn’t contain all of these Legos is not complete, no matter how complex it is, how developed as a personality a heart seems.

Where I’ve spent several minutes trying to explain this idea, a client once encapsulated it brilliantly in a single sentence. If I drop a teacup and it shatters, I don’t end up with a dozen new teacups. In other words, fragmentation of the personality doesn’t create more of the personality. It simply takes what was already present and divides it up. It may be divided into three altars or 200. But either way, it’s the same total amount of personality.

Now I wanna be clear that I understand you may feel like a full complete personality. That’s how you experience yourself. But we know there are at least some elements of the entire personality that you don’t have. And none of this is meant to invalidate you in any way. You are a vital member of your system. In the next two videos, I’m going to explain why it is that every member of the system even the annoying parts or the scary parts or the alters you wish would disappear, are vital.