Silberg’s The Child Survivor: Healing Developmental Trauma and Dissociation: Brief quotes showing basic childhood roots of multiple personality

“Eight months after having seen me for an initial assessment, Cameron asked his foster mother, ‘Can you take me back to the lady who knows about voices?’ Children who have developed private worlds with elaborate imaginary friends, voices that talk to them, and secret identities that take over and influence their behavior are deeply relieved when this information is uncovered, and feel a strong and intense bond with the therapist who has finally understood them” (1, p. 35).

“Asking questions about the child’s experiences in five primary domains will allow you to get a comprehensive understanding of the phenomenological world of the chronically traumatized child with dissociative symptomatology” (1, p. 36). The five domains are abridged as follows:

1. Perplexing Shifts in Consciousness: shutdown states, flashback states, sleepwalking, feeling in a fog or not in one’s own body, shifting sense of self

2. Vivid Hallucinatory Experiences: hearing voices; seeing and interacting with ghosts; imaginary friends that take over or influence behavior; feeling older or younger than actual age

3. Marked Fluctuations in knowledge, moods, behavior: feeling one’s moods have a mind of their own; skills & abilities vary; sense of oneself is divided

4. Perplexing memory lapses for one’s own behavior or recent events

5. Abnormal Body Experiences include self-harm, pseudoseizures, pain insensitivity

From page 42 about Imaginary Friends (IF):

Questions About                  Normal    Dissociative

Imaginary Friends (IF)   Preschoolers  Inpatients

IF comes whenever you want   76%        47%

IF comes when you are happy  94%        58%

IF knows things you do not      82%        58%

IF is only a pretend friend        78%        37%

IF makes you do things            37%        74%

IF tries to boss you                   27%        72%

IF does bad and blames you     41%        74%

IF tells you to keep secrets       84%        41%

IFs argue about you                  25%        93%

IFs come when you are angry  41%        79%

You wish IF would go away    17%        58%

1. Joyanna L. Silberg. The Child Survivor: Healing Developmental Trauma and Dissociation. New York, Routledge, 2013.

Joyanna L. Silberg, PhD, psychologist, is an expert on dissociation in children and adolescents, and a past president of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation.