American Psychiatric Association’s DSM-5 says Imaginary Playmates are the Normal Multiple Personality of Childhood

DSM-5, the official psychiatric diagnostic manual, prohibits the clinician from making the diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder (multiple personality disorder) in children on the basis of “imaginary playmates” (1, p. 292).

The manual doesn’t give a reason, but the implication is that imaginary playmates are common and normal.

The manual does not disqualify imaginary playmates by specifying any observable differences between it and multiple personality. Indeed, if imaginary playmates and multiple personality did not look quite similar, there would be no reason for the manual to mention it.

Of course, DSM-5 is a manual of mental disorders, not normal psychology. A person could very clearly have multiple personalities, but unless “the symptoms cause clinically significant distress and impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning” (1, p. 292), DSM-5 is not interested.

Skeptics about multiple personality think that they are being clever when they ask, “If multiple personality is real and begins in childhood, why is it found so infrequently in childhood?” The answer is that multiple personality is so common in childhood that it is considered normal.

1. American Psychiatric Association: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition. Arlington, VA, American Psychiatric Association, 2013.