Are Alters Complete Personalities? What the Experts Say

(Summary) The question of whether an alter can be a complete personality is one of the most debated—and sensitive—topics in Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) and Other Specified Dissociative Disorder (OSDD). While many alters experience themselves as full personalities, mental health experts point out that no part has access to the whole self. Looking through the lens of the structural dissociation model, we can see why everyday life parts and trauma-holding parts each carry only part of the full picture.

The question of whether or not an alter can be a complete personality is a touchy subject for many alters. In this two part video series, I’m going to look at two different ways of explaining why it is that mental health experts who study DID or work with clients with DID say that no DID or OSDD system has even a single complete personality in it. Now my guess is that many of you who will watch this will find this to be ridiculous or even offensive because you are experiencing yourself as a full and complete personality. My hope is that I can explain why both can be true at once: that no single alter in a system contains a complete personality, and that multiple parts or alters in a system can experience themselves as complete personalities.

If you view DID through the lens of the structural association model, you can get one view of why no alter is a complete personality in and of itself. In this image, you see the two halves of the brain. As I discussed in a previous video, parts or alters tend to be located within either the left side of the brain or the right side of the brain depending on their role.

Everyday life parts, parts that are fronting most of the time, and that went to school, go to work, and handle the tasks like getting groceries, are located on the left side of the brain. The left brain is very rational in its approach to experiences. The left brain has speech and some access to emotions. But not nearly as much as the right brain does.

The trauma holding parts of a system are typically found in the right brain. The right brain approaches experiences through emotions. Just like the left brain is primarily driven by thoughts and has less access to emotions, the right brain is primarily driven by emotions and has less access to analytical thought.

The two halves of the brain are connected by the corpus callosum. When the corpus callosum is severed in surgery, the two halves of the brain function independently. The corpus callosum helps to coordinate the functions of the two halves. Interestingly, childhood neglect and abuse typically leads to a smaller, corpus callosum less able to coordinate the two halves of the brain. So just looking at alters or parts through the lens of the structural dissociation model, we can see that with some alters being left brained and others being right brained, each is missing full access to the other side of the brain. Purely from this point of view, this means no part is a complete personality.

But what if you don’t look at DID through the structural dissociation model? In the next video, I’m going to use Legos to explain it another way.