33.20 - MU Podcast - The Fractured Self
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At Sierra, discover top workout gear at incredible prices, which might lead to another discovery. Your headphones haven't been connected this whole time. Awkward. Discover top brands at unexpectedly low prices. Sierra, let's get moving. Welcome to Mysterious Universe, Season 33, Episode 24.

Coming up on the show, we've got When Your Alter Dates an Alter, John Keel's Soft Objects and the Gas Gnomes, and the Split Personality Mind Palace. I'm your host, Benjamin Grundy. Joining me is Aaron Wright. Say the first one again. When Your Alter Dates an Alter? Yeah, so you know in multiple personality disorder, they say you've got your main personality, but you've got alters.

Right, and they all step into the spotlight at certain points and your consciousness kind of goes to the wayside. Yeah, you withdraw into this dark psyche and...

lose control of the body. The alter steps forward and the thinking that's developed over the time of treating these patients with this disorder is that the alters are born from moments of severe trauma where the main consciousness, the main personality cannot deal with it and quite literally steps into the recesses of the mind and this new personality forms to deal with that trauma. And over time with patients that suffer from this, that alter becomes

gets stronger. It starts to take on its own, you know, control of the body. It spends more time if the patient's really suffering. It spends more time as kind of the master controller of the body. And I've got a case coming up with two individuals that both suffered from multiple personality. They were both seeing the same psychiatrist and, you know, they knew each other. They ran into each other a couple of times and didn't really think much of each other.

And until there was a moment where one of the alters was controlling this male. Oh, I see where you're going. And for the female, one of her alters was controlling her. And these two alternate personalities met each other for the first time and fell in love.

That's going to be difficult to deal with. And they both agreed, all right, we've got to get control of these bodies so that you and I can hook up more. Where is this from? It's from this book. It's a bit of a classic. It's from Ralph B. Allison, Minds in Many Pieces, revealing the spiritual side of multiple personality disorder. Oh, fascinating. This is a classic. It was first published in 1980. It was reissued in 1999 with a bunch of new case studies. But he's got

So many incredible stories. And yeah, one of them is these two alternate personalities who had to kind of conspire behind the scenes without their main consciousnesses knowing that they were going to hook up. Oh, right. Because with those cases normally, isn't it that the main consciousness kind of is not aware of what the alter consciousness is doing? They had no idea. Yeah. Eventually, these two alternate personalities got enough control that they were able to move in together. Yeah.

And then they got married. And so the original mind, the original sentience of this woman, she's walking down the aisle, right? The altar is in control. For some reason, the original personality breaks through and gets control.

She looks down. She's in her wedding dress. There's a guy that she just met in an office once waiting to marry her. All these people are looking at her and she's like, what the hell's going on? Why am I in a wedding dress? This is a good question. Where are the family members? Like, wouldn't they, like, are these, like,

Are all the people in the crowd, are they controlled by alter personalities as well? Or they just happen to be like friends and family of the alter personalities? It's the real friends and family, but often the alternate personalities are able to hide it so well. Yeah, they camouflage themselves. And that was part of their conspiracy. Yeah. They're like, we've got to pretend to be the real personalities so that we can hook up and get married. Or is it just that she's like, you know what? This is not a good idea. I'm bailing out. Yeah.

Like the last second. Oh no, it's a multiple personality problem. It's a great story. I've got it coming up later on this episode. Fantastic. What have you got coming up? Well, I wanted to go into, last week we were talking about people's encounters with fae creatures and specifically in relation to trees. Well, I've got a little story that kind of jumps off from that, but it turns out it relates to something known as what John Keel called the soft objects. So this is like-

It sounds dirty. Is it dirty? It's not dirty at all. Well, there are a couple of dirty stories. There is a bit of like gnome ass slapping going and you just did the whole clown horn kind of movement with your hands that no one saw on camera. I didn't do it. No, I saw it. No one else saw it. But no, there's a bit of butt slapping from a gnome that comes in. But the reality is, is that these amorphous type of creatures are

for whatever reason, they seem to manifest as gnome-type creatures. So we're going to go and cover some of these stories of where people think that their house is haunted with a poltergeist or, you know, some type of weird, horrible, ghostly creature, and it just turns out to be a creepy little green gnome. Like, over and over again. You've got to admit, though, that gnomes have a very grabbable arse. Like, historically speaking. No, no, no. The gnome grabs the arse of, like, a witch.

Oh, the gnome's doing the pom-pom. Yeah, the worm's doing it. The gnome's doing it. Totally different scenario. I was going to say it crosses over with my content, but now it's totally different. Great. So now you're some gnome apologist or something, are you? I've always been a gnome apologist. Oh, I know that. I'm a gnome truther. I'm sure. Well, let's get into this story. This is a great one. Ralph B. Allison classic. And I've got to give a shout out to Iculus who sent me this on Twitter. He just said, look, you guys have been doing this for so long, but long shot, have you done this book before? Nope.

Never done it. And it's awesome. So thanks to him for sending this through. So Ralph Allison, again, psychiatrist. He practiced in California for decades. And he stumbled across these cases of multiple personality disorder. And this was in his practice. Yeah, this was in the 1960s. And it was basically not much known about it back then and not much in the literature. So it's like he was on his own.

He is one of these guys who always put the benefits of the patient ahead of following the dogma of the psychiatric science. Yeah, please go and turn down the air con. It's boiling in here already. So yeah, his first book is this one. I'll be covering Minds in Many Pieces. Incredible case histories. He established his practice in Santa Cruz in the 1960s.

And yeah, quickly realized that psychiatry was in its infancy and that the complexities of the human mind just were not understood, obviously. They're still not. Yeah, they're still not and will probably never be. So one of his first patients he mentions was this guy named David. And he's, you know, fresh out of school, this psychiatrist, Dr. Allison. And he gets this patient named David who's convinced he's Jesus. Wow.

Absolutely convinced. And the reason Dr. Allison ended up getting him is because this patient figured out that his current psychologist was Jewish. And he was convinced that he was going to like persecuting me, he was going to put him on the cross. So he's like, I need another psychiatrist. I'm Jesus. And so he ended up going to Dr. Allison, who's, you know, fresh out of school.

And he tried his best to treat this guy and he's like, it worked. I treated him after a few months of sessions with this guy. What did he use? Some type of unconventional methodology? No, just a combination of conventional psychiatry techniques. And I think he had him on some drugs and ultimately the guy came to him and said, look,

I'm embarrassed. You know, I was wrong. I'm obviously not Jesus. I don't know why I thought that. This is just insane. I'm so embarrassed. And Dr. Allison was like, thank God. Like, that's a great breakthrough. I'm so glad to hear that. He says, this patient says, well, I'm actually St. Thomas. He's convinced he's like St. Thomas or something. And so there's this whole story how he's treating him for that and treating him for that. Eventually the guy's like, I was wrong about everything.

I'm not Jesus. I'm not St. Thomas. I'm cured. It was just delusions of grandeur. I'm totally fine now. And eventually they release him and he goes back to his job as a teacher. And Dr. Allison, he is from the headmaster of the school where this guy, David, is a teacher. And he said, you know, we brought him in because we were into the office and we commended him on how great he's been doing the last six weeks. He's been working really hard. He's a great teacher.

But this headmaster described in this meeting, this guy, David, he agreed. And he said, yes, I have been doing great. And he says, in fact, I am the best teacher in the school. And he says, now that I say that, I'm actually the best teacher in the county. No, in fact, the best teacher in the state. So he's suffering from delusions of grandiosity or something? It's like the same thing. Eventually, he's like, I am the greatest teacher in the world. And so he had to go back to hospital and

Eventually, he can deal with it now in his general life, but he just has this thing. Whenever he starts doing anything, he immediately has this psychology of he's the greatest in the world at it.

Which is kind of like how my five-year-old was last year. Well, I mean, it sounds like he's suffering from a form of narcissism. But, I mean, children are naturally narcissistic because for the most part of their lives, you know, it's like the world does revolve around them. As they start to grow, those narcissistic sort of traits kind of disappear. But this clearly is ingrained in this guy. Yeah. It's a personality. The greatest at everything. But then came Janet.

Everything changed once she saw Janet. This was March of 1972. Janet and her husband had just moved to Santa Cruz and they came into his office by chance. Again, referred from another psychiatrist. She was 29 years old. A lot of her trouble started in 10th grade where she dropped out of school, became a waitress.

When she was 17, she married a man she'd been dating for three months just to get out of the house. She hated living with her mother. She just wanted to get out of the house. So she marries this guy. Turns out he is a homosexual. Good start to life.

I know someone who is a raving moan and he went back into the closet, right? But his wife after decades, like he like found out about him, right? Decades. Decades, decades. Found out, was like, oh no, let's ignore that. But you know what the best part of it is? What?

Come on, spit it out. The wedding anniversary is April 1st. Oh my gosh. Biggest April Fool's joke in history. Perfect. That is just perfect. Absolutely perfect. Well, obviously the marriage is a disaster. Of course. So she becomes very, very depressed. But part of her depression was understandable because she had a baby with this guy, but the umbilical cord became twisted. You know, tragedy, the baby passed away. The husband blamed her, said it was her fault.

Her second husband, so she leaves this guy, her second husband loved her. He wasn't homosexual. But his profession was like getting into bar fights and betting on himself.

So he's like an MMA grifting fighter or something? He's kind of like Wolverine. Yeah, but making money out of it. But he doesn't have powers. He just makes money from bar fights. Does he throw them though? Is that what he does? Like he throws the fight on purpose? No, he just challenges people and she said he was so good at it, we kind of made a meager living out of it. But that's his only flaw. He just is a bar fighter. He said, we began talking about the problems that had brought Janet to my office. She

She was a compulsive. Some mornings she got up early, started cleaning the house and just couldn't stop. All day she's cleaning the house.

At other times, she became depressed and couldn't do anything, couldn't get out of bed. She felt hostile towards her husband, and she admitted she had thoughts about killing him. Even worse, she had fantasies about killing their children. Well, that's a problem. She'd been already diagnosed with schizophrenia, but the drugs weren't helping. Plus, she didn't have the smell anymore.

Hang on, the smell? Did you know people that suffer from schizophrenia have a smell? No, I had no idea. I'd never heard of this. He said the chemical imbalance that apparently causes schizophrenia, now mind you, this book was published in the 1980, so I don't know if this holds up today, but he said- As in the neurochemical imbalance? Yes, it results in a body odor and people who work around mentally disturbed patients-

they eventually can spot it. You can sniff out a schizophrenic. Does it describe what the smell is like? No, apparently it's not a bad smell, but it's just distinct. And, you know, nurses who work in mental institutions, they eventually start to notice it.

Um, she didn't have the smell. So maybe she was a manic depressive. She had a lot of those symptoms, but he ended up prescribing her lithium and she didn't respond to that either. Now, keep in mind, he's been practicing now for like 15, 16 years. And these treatments and techniques he's been using have been very effective with his other patients. Something different about this woman. She then winds up in hospital after a failed suicide attempt. She overdosed on pills.

And he refers her to a colleague who specializes in manic depression because he's like, maybe this is a little bit out of my league. I'll give it to someone else. The next evening, he said he's lying in bed and the telephone rings and it's this female psychologist he referred this patient to. And she says to him on the phone, Ralph,

You know what you're dealing with here, right? And he's, what are you talking about? Tell me. She says, this is a classic case of multiple personality disorder. And he's like, that's impossible. That's so rare. There's like five cases in the history books. What are you talking about? And she says, no, I met her in the hospital and I went to see her. She was talking about how she didn't belong in the hospital. She was walking about agitated, she said, saying there was nothing wrong with her.

She was saying things like, she's the one that's depressed, not me. It's her, not me, talking about this other person. She said she was talking in the third person like that. And I had the feeling she was talking about Janet. It was like there was somebody else, some other person in the body. It's a classic example. So he's like, ah, I guess I'll see her first thing tomorrow. So he takes her back on as a patient and he was shocked because

Um, this referral he had given, this was a, you know, a psychologist that, or psychiatrist, sorry, that he trusted implicitly. And so he meets Janet the next day in his practice and she comes in, he remembers her, she's quiet, introverted, uh, embarrassed about the suicide attempt.

But she says to him, I don't even remember taking those pills. I have no memory of it at all. So it's her alter personality, which is suicidal. Is that what the suggestion is? Yeah. Well, she's not suicidal because she says my children need me. I love my children. I would never do that. And he eventually says to her, look, the psychologist you saw yesterday, she said there's someone else in there with you. And she's like, what? I don't understand. What are you talking about?

Now, well, she probably wouldn't have any knowledge of it. Well, he's never done this before. It's totally new to him. And he says, what I mean is there's someone inside your head, someone else sharing your body. And I'd like to meet that person if you can give me a little cooperation. And he's just totally winging it. She's like, all right, doc, what do you want me to do? And he's basically like, relax, close your eyes. I tries to get her into a almost meditative, you know, altered state maybe.

And he wasn't sure what he was going to do. He said, I just needed to sound confident and try and get this alter out. And she eventually relaxed. And he says, okay, now I want to talk to whoever or whatever spoke to the psychologist last night. Come out on the count of three. And he's like, three, two, one, just like trying anything. And on the count of three, he said, Janet's body stiffened. Her previously blank facial expression became hard and calculating and

And her total face changes and he hears this, okay, doc, what do you want? It's totally different voice comes through harsh grading loud. The stance was that of a woman who had seen and done so much that nothing could surprise her. And she, this, this voice is like, oh God, it's good to finally get out. He's like, he said it was something out of a movie. It was like complete transformation.

Her tone, her voice, her mannerisms, everything was different. It was clearly not the same person. And he's like, oh, so you're not Janet? And this woman just smiles at him, stands up, stretches out her body, stretches her arms and legs, and starts walking around him, like checking him out, like looking him up and down. Do you think I'm that piss ass, she says.

She moves over to the bed in the room, sits down and spreads her legs apart, revealing everything from her skirt and just starts like posing like a prostitute on the bed. Like she wants him to come over and have his way with her.

And she's like, you're kind of cute. I bet you know a lot of tricks, big boy like you. He's like, all right, I'll admit it. I'm not exactly a 10 out of 10. He says, I'm a big guy to put it politely. So he's fat, he's overweight, he's unfit. And she's acting like he's a perfect catch. He's like, who are you? Do you have a name? Name? Well, I guess you can call me Lydia.

And the whole trouble with me, she said, is that I'm trapped in this piss ass body and she doesn't want to do a damn thing that's fun. And so he has this back and forth with this woman named Lydia. She talks about how she loves drinking, dancing, going out and having sex with as many men as she can. That's the most important thing in life. He's like, when do you do these things? She says, whenever I can get control of the body, honey. And how does she get control?

Well, she doesn't describe this at first. She just talks about it as in breaking loose. She says, I try and break loose every night, but I can't. She says, I'm getting better though. I'm getting out, popping pills, picking up men more and more. She says, one day I'm going to kill this bitch. Hell, she doesn't have any idea of how to have fun. If this body is going to get around and enjoy life, I'm the one who's going to take control of it. But this seems unusual in the sense that

It's like, I guess a virus doesn't understand that if it kills its host, like it's in trouble, obviously. But this is the same kind of thing. It's like if she kills her host, she's gone too. That's the first thing he addresses. He tries to rationally explain, no, no, no, you're in the same body. Oh, so she doesn't realize. Well, she does, but she's just convinced that if she kills this host,

Well, maybe when she's saying... She'll take control of the body. Yeah, that's maybe what I'm thinking. Like she's saying that she's going to kill her, but it's like she'll kill the ego. Yeah. And so she keeps saying how she's like the best piece of ass in California. She's basically a disgusting whore, right? And eventually he's like...

there's got to be more. There's got to be more of these personalities. Like, God forbid, but is there more? And he starts questioning, if there's more, come out now. And this woman's like, ah, piss off. I'm the only one. I'm the best piece of ass on the planet. And he keeps commanding, if there's more, like, reveal yourselves now. And eventually she's like, ah, and she kind of passes out. And this other voice comes through,

And as she's really soft, her mannerisms become very feminine again. A very, like, timid voice comes through and says, I'm not Janet. My name's Marie, and I'm so tired of all this in and out of hospitals. It's just madness stuck in here, coming out, trying to clean up this mess. So this is another altar named Marie.

She's been trying to stop this evil Lydia from just becoming a destructive whore and she's exhausted by it. So we've got this. So it's not the host. It's like it's another entire entity dedicated to this security. Yeah. Her name's Marie. She's the one that tried to overdose on pills because she is just fatigued with this situation where she's like,

the cleanup crew that has to come in and deal with this evil alternate personality. I have to ask a question though. I mean, this does sound like it's similar to the Billy Milligan story of where these multiple personalities are within this space, but also it kind of coincides with spirit attachment. How can we tell the difference? Well, that's a really great question. And when you read this book, you go through these case studies from his early career and

And it gets to a certain point, as we often see with these kind of therapists, where they start to run into these alters that are a little bit different to what you usually see. In saying that, there's no creation point for them. They have histories that go back before the birth of the patient, for example. Right, yeah. They can get out of the body.

in some instances. And so, yeah, it's a great question because towards the end of the book, he starts to reveal, which for the time was incredibly controversial. Well, certainly. I mean, if he's early in this space, he wouldn't even be crossing the idea of spirit attachment. 1980. Yeah. Because was it Edith Fiore was the one that kind of got into, she was one of the pioneers. I think she was in the seventies though. So she was probably a little bit earlier, but I mean, this guy was, you know, well-established, you know, by the book. And mainstream.

But by the end, he's like, yeah, there's some of these cases where they're clearly not alters. They're external spirits. These are cases of spirit possession. Well, when you hear of so many cases, like as you pointed out earlier, is that the belief is that this splintering occurs as a result of a traumatic event or, but I'm like,

Some of them, it's like how many personalities can come from one event? Like it seems like this is too many for it to kind of, and maybe it could, but it's like it kind of aligns more with spirit attachment of where people just become magnets for these things. In many of these cases, in severe cases of multiple personality disorder, like there's one in one of his later books where he deals with 72 split personalities. And some of these patients, the main consciousness is so weak and withdrawn that

Any kind of trauma, their go-to reaction is to create an alter personality. Right. So, for example, if they get a speeding ticket, they can't deal with that. Yep. So, a personality is created to deal with the speeding ticket. It must be exhausting, though. Like, they have 72 personalities that your brain has to keep track of somehow. They're completely broken individuals, like literally split into multiple parts. And so, this Maria personality with Janet was...

was the one that had tried to commit suicide and she feels guilty for it. And he basically explains, you know, that was wrong. It's not going to solve anything right. And she, you know, apologizes, says she's not going to do it again. And he said, I didn't ask about anyone else inside the body because I was afraid of what I was going to find. He said, then Marie's stance and attitude changed and Janet reappeared. He said, to my surprise, she had no knowledge of what had gone on in that session. So she's like completely out.

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He explains to her that she has these multiple personalities and she seemed to accept the explanation, seemed to be eager for treatment. So again, Dr. Allison, he reads everything he can on MPD, multiple personality disorder. And again, it's like a coping mechanism. As I explained, some major trauma and there's a split. This other personality is created. So Lydia was angry, craved. She was because the patient, Janet,

couldn't react with anger. Like if something upset her, she wasn't capable of going, no, I don't like that. That's wrong. Yeah. She creates a form to deal with it. That was Lydia's job. Right. And she would be the one that would fight back and kind of stand up for herself. But she got out of control. She got totally out of control and just became hedonistic. The other aspect of her was that Janet was a homebody. She never went out. She just stayed in her home all the time.

And because she never went out and got any kind of leisure or entertainment, that other alter, Lydia, that was her to the nth degree. Like she just wanted hedonism. She wanted to have sex and drugs and party all the time. So was she treated?

Well, Alison, the altar was created to look after the children because of the trauma of losing the first child was so much. Alison was created. Then when she had later kids, this altar would literally come and breastfeed them, raise them, you know, make their lunches, send them off to school. Like this whole other personality was doing that. So he basically, Dr. Alison realizes there's not much about this in the literature. Like I'm on my own. I got to try and figure this out. So,

Janet was in hospital for six weeks before the staff sent her home, pronouncing her to be cured. Because in the hospital, Lydia was just abusing everyone. She was trying to have sex with all the male nurses and just going crazy. Eventually, this alter, Lydia, realized, if I just disappear for a while, they're going to let it go. And that's exactly what happened. I'm surprised that they declare her cured because that's, you know, maybe that's for the time.

You can't just be suddenly cured or something like that. But again, it's 1970, not much is known about it. So she gets released and Dr. Allison is like, great, you know, and now I can treat her as a normal patient. And so the next time she comes into his office, he's like, oh, Janet, so glad you're feeling better. You know, let's talk about all the other issues. And immediately she's like, you son of a bitch, I was hiding in the hospital. Trying to choke him and strangle him. And she's like,

I had to hide on purpose. I knew that let me out of there, the stupid effers. And she's just going rank. So now he's like, I've really got to help her. She's not cured. His breakthrough is hypnosis. He's like, I've got to put her under and get to the bottom of this.

And so he quickly learns the purpose of Lydia when she was created. It was due to, you know, earlier trauma with losing the child and all of that. So his treatment approach is to force Janet to

to do the things herself that she had passed on to these alternate personalities. She'd essentially farmed them out to people. Yeah, exactly. It's outsourced all her emotions. So when her husband pissed her off, for example, he's like, you've got to get angry. Like you've got to respond. You've got to let the emotion out. You've got to force yourself to do it. And so she starts doing this and she kind of goes out to a bar and tries to have fun one night and

And the next time in one of these sessions, this horrible Lydia comes out, she's like drawn and exhausted.

And she's like, I don't have the energy to take control of the body anymore, doc. It's just not worth it. It's so hard to get up. She's like, she's been drained of energy because the main consciousness has taken control of those emotions. So it's kind of like, that's just a residual of that form. But it's like, it's an integration. Because that's what happened in Billy Milligan, wasn't it? There was like an integration of those egos back into the central ego. Yeah.

Yes. And it really gives an insight into the energetic underlying function of this whole disorder. And it also extends into other aspects of our lives because the most of us obviously don't have this issue.

But we're not immune to the same foundations of it. Well, I mean, they say that, and when I say they, it's like a psychological trope that we all wear masks, right? We all wear masks depending on what setting that we go into. So, you know, when you're going to see people at school, it's different to the way that you're behaving at your work or if you go and hang out with your friends. So you put on these different aspects of your personality. It's not a real mask, obviously. But I wonder if in some circumstances for people, it's like they can't

I don't know, they don't have the energy, they don't have the psychological ability to actually do that. So they actually create these alter egos to do that for them. Yeah. And a lot of it comes down to, and people won't like this answer, but the strength of mind and will, you know, the strength of the willpower, because it actually reminds me of addiction to a degree, because it's been theorized in some new ideas that addiction actually creates like one of these alters. Really? It's like a version of you that's

pure existence is to do the thing that you're addicted to. Yeah, I could see that. And the more you feed the addiction, the stronger this alter gets. And it's a bit, a little bit different. Like it doesn't control your mind to a degree, but you're controlled by the addiction. And so when you have someone who fights the addiction, has the willpower to not feed the addiction, it's, it's like that,

version of you that is controlled by the that's split off because of this addiction it's not fed by anything so it gets weaker and weaker and weaker and you people that have overcome addictions know this that when you have the willpower to not feed it it loses its control over you over time eventually the addiction dissipates where you feel no pull from it you feel no force of control from it

And so this gives us an insight into what may be happening in another aspect of ourselves, that these addictions dissipate. The energy that keeps them sustained is no longer there and they die. They fade away. So he talks about how Janet, even though all this was going on, she hadn't fully accepted her situation.

The moment she fully accepted, he said, was a moment he made a big mistake. He was having a session with Janet and Lydia came through the horrible whore and

And by the end of the session, he had another patient coming and Lydia wouldn't give control back to Janet, which was always the case. He always made her give back control. And because he's like late for the next appointment, he's like, all right, Lydia, well, you off you go and just make sure you give control back to Janet. She's like, I promise I'll give control back to that bitch. So she walks out of his office. She goes to her car, starts driving.

And she's like, all right, it's party time. She just immediately goes to Skid Row. She picks up two homeless men wanting to have sex with them. And he's like, that was the most disgusting, like piss stained on drugs. They stunk.

And she gets them into her car and is like, all right, let's party, boys. Starts driving down the highway. These guys were so messed up on drugs. The guy in the passenger seat passes out. The guy in the back seat passes out. Sounds like that's a good thing. Lydia's driving down the highway and she's like, oh, this sucks. I'm not going to give you the action now. All right, see you later. So she fades back into the background.

And Janet comes through. She's like, oh, I'm on the highway. How does she know this? Like, how does she know this happened when she came back? But yeah, the fact that she came to driving in the car and there's a couple of hobos in the car. And she said this had happened often. She would just find herself in the car driving somewhere with no memory of how she got there. And so this is just one of those moments. And she's like, oh, I'm on the highway. And then she's like...

what is that smell? Oh, it's disgusting. And she looks over and there's this disgusting hobo in the passenger seat. She looks in the rear view mirror. There's another guy in the back seat. She's so freaked out by this. She crashes. Like she runs into the ditch, into the medium, the median and, uh, you know, crashes the car. She's okay. But this, he says, this is when it hits that this is real. And, uh,

He says this is required, like this acceptance is required. Otherwise, people just don't get better because, again, they have to have that willpower. Yeah, that conviction. That conviction to stop these entities from getting stronger, these alters from getting stronger. Well, if these egos serve this purpose of dealing with, you know, your anxiety and anger issues and that kind of stuff,

Well, you don't really want to get rid of them. Like obviously they're causing inconvenience and trouble for you, but do you really want to get rid of them when you don't have to deal with it? There's a case later where this woman ran a business and she was a beautician or something and she kind of hated it. So she'd go to work at 9am and it was like severance. She would just walk in and this other worker would kick in and just do all the work, take care of the clients and then check out at 5pm. Okay, I would want that. That works. I can deal with that. So if you could do that, I mean, that would be pretty cool.

Yeah, you don't really want to wake up to a couple of hobos in your car. Yeah. So because she's got this conviction now, she really puts in her own effort to solve this. And one day, the doc, he gets a call and it's from Janet, but it's a different personality. And she says, you've got to call me. You've got to come over. I've got some information. So she calls, you know, he calls back Janet the next morning and she's like, I didn't call you. Who called you? And she's convinced it's Lydia. Yeah.

And so what Janet does is she comes up with this genius way of... What, masquerading as her? Well, she doesn't know. Janet just knows someone called the psychiatrist. So she came up with this method using a tape recorder. She would record herself on the tape

and say, look, I want to talk to Lydia. Where are you? And then she'd press stop. Lydia would come into her mind and press record and start talking on the tape. Oh, like a weird EVP. I mean, even though it's not, but it's like, yeah, you're using it to... And he got a copy of the tape. She gives him the tape. And it's this back and forth of Janet arguing with herself, but it's Lydia.

These different persons. And Lydia's like, I didn't fucking call him, you bitch. I wouldn't do it. And she's like, who called him then? It wasn't me. And they're just having this back and forth for like 10 minutes. And eventually this other personality comes in that none of them have heard before. And she's like, I called the doctor. My name's Karen. And you're going to listen to what I say because I'm the only person that can help you. And so eventually he figures out there's this whole other entity.

And yeah, her name's Karen and she's what's known as the inner self helper. She's separate to all these alters. She's something different. And he noticed that in every case, this entity would emerge.

the inner self helper. And we know from other healing modalities, like internal family systems, for example, they call it like the higher self or the true self or something. This came about from Robert Moody's investigations into out of body states. There's the idea of this true self. This goes back to like ancient Western philosophy of the daemon. There is a higher aspect of each of us that is the true individual. Right.

The game controller. And so what he did was he got Janet to come in while she was Janet and do a personality test on like a computer test. And then she got Lydia to come in. She's like, oh, if I can do the test. She does the test and she gets Karen to come in and do the test. And he gets a personality profile on each of them. He said the computer system for whatever it was in the seventies, it rejected Karen's. It said she's lying.

Because she was a perfectly balanced, like considered. Yeah. And you're not supposed to be perfectly balanced. Which is impossible. Yeah. And the computer's like, they're lying. Yeah.

I've done psychology tests and one of the feedback that I got was that the test thought I was faking it because I was too balanced. Oh, really? And I'm like, I kind of was because I was like, when I was looking at it, I was like, well, I'm just not going to say that, no, I don't get stressed. That's fine. Yeah, that's the thing. And they can detect it. You fill out those forms and you answer how you want to be, but not how you are. When you get cut off in traffic, do you feel like killing? They want me to say no. No. Well, yeah, this Karen is just like,

a perfect individual. And he said, I believe that she was perfect because I eventually found in my other patients that she was the inner self helper. This aspect is the best part of the individual, the conscience or the super ego. So it's part of the individual's consciousness, he says, that is free from emotion. It's not neurotic.

It's pure thought uses good judgment. And he said one of the key things is it's always connected to God. It always acknowledges God. It acknowledges higher power, a higher being. It acknowledges spirituality. That's what guides it. That's a bit weird, though.

Yeah. That then ties back to spirit attachment stuff. He just noticed this as a trend, like that higher self, it always had a spiritual goal in mind. It had like higher principles. Um, one of his patients, ISHs, internal self helpers or whatever it's called in internal self helper said, I am the conscience. I am the punisher. If need be, I am the teacher.

Well, I will always be here, but I will always be separate. If I am gone, she is just a body. She can send part of me off and leave a small portion, but if all is taken, she is a shell. Now I am kept busy sorting out the different messes and problems created between these alter personalities.

So, yeah, it's a really important part of the whole understanding of this, that each of us have these, whatever you want to call it, but these true selves, these higher selves that are the real people.

The real you, the real soul. But for the power that this thing seems to have, it doesn't appear to be able to just easily resolve this. Why doesn't it just overwrite these other personalities? Why can't it step in and clear it all out? It seems like it's doing rather minuscule things. It's got limited control because, again, I guess it comes down to free will. And it's like this question of...

If it is something like the daemon, which is like a higher spirit but can't take full control of the body, all it can do is give you hints. All it can do is try and guide you to the right direction. But ultimately, it's like, this is why we're so complicated. There's still an aspect of you that is conscious in this body that makes the decisions, that calls the shots. And so if that will isn't there, there's only so much this higher being can do. And so it basically gives him a treatment plan

But the ultimate thing with her is her husband, her bar fighter husband gets a job in another state and she moves away.

So locality makes a difference? No, there's no conclusion to her as a patient. Oh, I see. She just moves. Well, that's kind of sad though. I hope that she was able to overcome that. But what comes through in this, and this is without exception in every case he talks about, every single patient was either sexually assaulted when they were a child or raped later in life.

It's without exception. It's weird then that you've got

the sexual attribute connected to so many of these things yeah it's like the it's like the ultimate um well it's the ultimate intrusion it's like a spiritual weapon yeah fracture the psyche yeah uh and that's why you know when we've covered those stories in the past those crazy mk ultra stories where people claim you know they broke me down so they could create like an alter personality well they always claim sexual assault they did it with like organized rape and things like that it's like

If you look at the multiple personality disorder cases, it's exactly what happens to these poor people in their early life. Like it's, again, without exception, there's some kind of sexual abuse. So she was abused by her mother when she was 14.

So it's strange, though, as well, because like, as we're beginning to understand things like PTSD, I mean, I know PTSD is kind of bandied about these days, but there are people that genuinely have it, you know, not because they're, you know, spiritual, you know, animal wasn't allowed to come on a flight with them.

The people that have been in war and that kind of stuff, right? And what we're beginning to understand is that there's like a fracturing of these events as well. So these events kind of float around in your mind. It's really strange the way it's described. And you have to reintegrate them to be able to overcome them. And I'm like, hearing that, it's so similar to what's being used in these multiple personalities. So is there a possible chance that people are suffering from multiple personality? It's like,

whatever that trauma was, rather than fracturing their memory and their events, it's like it fractured their ego. Yeah. It's like they took a different approach to it. Yeah. And it created something else. Yeah. I mean, that's a good insight because, I mean, obviously the circumstances that allow these things to happen in these people, we all share those mental foundations to some degree. So he's like,

Crazy case, like crazy patient, insane. I hope that never happens again. Like that was tough. And then Carrie comes along.

What are the odds these doctors though seem to attract these sorts of cases? Well, this is over a 10-year period. So later in life, because he got a reputation for dealing with these cases, he got more and more. But this is just very early on. Carrie Hornsby came to his office. She had severe depression, mood disorders. For years, she was acting strange and her family thought she was being kind of odd, but they just ignored it. Until New Year's Eve 1975, she failed to show up for a party.

And her husband discovered her in their apartment with another man. And he grew livid. He, you know, threatened to leave her. And she started to stab herself with a knitting needle. Like out of nowhere. She'd never done this before. So that's what got her into his office. He had no idea this would be another case. Self-harm. So she'd always been beautiful. Even as a child, she had red hair, radiant face, just gorgeous woman.

You know, everyone doted on her. Father was in the Navy. Mother apparently never wanted her, so it was really awful to her. She was raised by her grandparents. But at one point, her father reunited with her mother when he was stationed in Japan, and the grandparents were like, let's have the family all back together and basically send her to Japan. When she was in Japan, she obviously didn't speak Japanese. She was very isolated, and one of the other kids that lived on the base,

was an older kid

He didn't sexually abuse her, but he beat her up like pretty severely, like sat on a chest, choked her out. And that was the first alter that split off. Right. She actually- A childhood trauma, does it? Yeah. She created a male alter because in her mind it was like boys are rough with each other. And so if I create a, if I become a boy, then this will be okay. Yeah. It's an equal kind of response. And so this male alter was created because

And when she moved back to the USA when she was 19, that male alter was still occasionally coming in, but in the background. But she got a job on a farm and she said that basically all the workers there were lesbians. And so this male alter, it made her kind of fit in. It sounds awful, but she was just like a little bit butch when the male alter came in. And so she kind of fit in.

But then again, going back to these horrible scenarios, she was raped by an outlaw motorcycle gang. This is like horrible. I'll spare you the details, obviously. But this created another alter. Incredibly traumatic. None of this came out until later. But in her first session, what made him realize this might be another multiple personality case is she said she would often find herself going to the beach and

And then she would black out and come to, and the waves would be like up to her neck. And she just waded out into the ocean. So was she, was the ego trying to kill her? Well, she had no idea. She'd have to swim back. And she thought she was going crazy because this would happen all the time she went to the beach. She would find herself like waist deep or neck deep in the water. She was worried she was going to drown.

Um, the, she was worried about her responsibilities too, because she worked as a nurse at an alcoholic treatment center. And she was like, I can't have these blackouts. Like I've got to be responsible for people. And the job created even more stress because the doctor in charge of that treatment center convinced Kerry to have oral sex with him in his office. And she, he was actually charged her for these visits. Oh my God. Yeah.

Pretty brutal. Yeah. So he's like, all right, let's get started. Let's try hypnosis. So he puts Carrie under and immediately she's like, she's going to kill me. She's going to kill me. Who's she? And that's what he asked. Like, who is she? She's going to kill me. She took a bunch of pills at work. She's going to kill me. She's going to kill me this weekend. She's got the pills from work stashed in her house. She's going to overdose this weekend. She's going to kill me. Who's going to kill you? She's like, Wanda. Wanda's going to kill me. Who's Wanda?

Now, suddenly Carrie's posture changes and she has this transformation. Like her face looks a little bit different, hardened, tense. I'm Wanda, you fat-headed son of a bitch. This totally different personality comes through. Wanda's there now. He says, I couldn't comprehend how I now had two multiple personality patients in my career. So Wanda, again, felt that if she killed Carrie, she would get the body. Doesn't work that way. He tried to reason with her. It didn't work.

He was convinced she wasn't in immediate danger, but during a later therapy session, he met Carrie's new alter personality. So here's the thing. The shock of the multiple personality disorder diagnosis, she couldn't handle. So she created an alter in his office to deal with the diagnosis. I see. Yeah.

But the problem is he says these altars require an incubation period. They require like at least a few weeks to be like fully mature. But this altar came out like a child and she suddenly became all giggly and was like, who are you? Are you my dad? To Dr. Allison. And this was this new altar and he's like, Carrie? She's like, Carrie's not here. Are you my daddy? It's like this four-year-old girl appeared.

Now, he said this new personality was named Deborah. And he watched as every session Carrie came in, this Deborah personality was like rapidly growing. So the next time she came. Maturing. Yeah, she was like 12 years old. The next time she was 14. And the next time she was like 16. And she's trying to figure out what sex is all about and what's the deal with like these emotions and hormones and

He says it was bizarre, but she just behaved like this teenager. And she stepped in whenever Carrie tried to commit suicide or whenever this other wander tried to commit suicide. This young teenager would step in and stop it. So this prevented her from wading out into the ocean? Yeah, like whenever she tried to slash her wrists, this...

this Deborah would come in and take control or call the emergency room for help? I mean, it's difficult to understand this kind of stuff because obviously it's a complex psychology, but I'm just really surprised at the number of these patients suffering from multiple personality that self-harm, like the egos that cause self-harm. Like, why are they trying to kill their host? Because they're just

They're broken, I guess. They obviously do not understand that if they actually do that, it's not going to kill the ego. It's going to kill their habitat. Yeah, and it seems like the main personality is suffering, but so are the alters. Yeah, of course. They hate the situation as well. But she comes, eventually, it's Christmas of 1972, I think it is, and...

She's hospitalized because she has all these alters and she just keeps switching every 30 seconds. She's like crazy. So she's into the mental institution and she's convinced that she's going to die on New Year's Eve 1972. She's convinced she's going to kill herself. She's going to be strangled by one of these alters. She cannot get it out of her mind. And nothing he can do can help her. No drugs are helping her.

So he discusses the case with another doctor friend and the doctor's like, I've got this guy. He's a doctor, he says, but he's, now keep an open mind, he's psychic.

And he remotely senses the patients and he'll be able to tell you a lot about what's going on. So basically, this is what I like about Dr. Allison. Well, at this point, you'd take anything, wouldn't you? All he cares about is helping his patient. And he knows, he's like, I don't believe this stuff. This is crazy, but I've got no other options left. If it helps my patient, I'm going to do it. And so he calls this psychic doctor and the doctor's like, all right, give me her name, photo, and I'll scan her.

And so- And what does he find? Takes a couple of days. And this Dr. Leichtman, his name is, he writes a letter back to Dr. Allison.

And he's like, okay, I've scanned Carrie and she's possessed by a depraved spook who took over her body two years ago after harassing her for some time previous. Some of these neurotic convulsions are a symptom of this entity that's working on her. He says the possession is quite strong now. This possessor comes from a woman who passed on from a drug overdose in New York in 1968. Her name's Bonnie.

And this psychic doctor's like, you will not be able to do any kind of integration or help her in any way. Because it's not part of her. Exactly. Until you get rid of this spirit, Bonnie. See, that's another factor that comes up. It's like when we discuss spirit possession, right? One of the things, it's like drug use, alcohol use, but also sexual assault is what causes people to be vulnerable to spirit attachment. And so this psychic guy, he claims that this notion that she's going to die on New Year's Eve, uh,

It's not actually that she's going to die. This psychic doctor says that it's meant to break the life cord of her soul attached to that body.

And he says, the reason this Bonnie spirit knows how to do this is that in a previous life, not the previous one, but one further back, she was an occult practitioner. Oh, so she knows how to cut that golden cord. No, the silver cord. And she, yeah, she learned this technique. And so if Carrie is convinced she's going to die, that goes a long way. It's like the nocebo effect. Yes. She's convinced she's going to die in some other dimension. That cord will be severed.

And then this spirit, Bonnie, will get the body on New Year's Eve. And this doctor's like, that's what's going to happen unless you stop it. What can you do? And he's like, this is crazy. I don't believe any of this. Like, I'm a medically trained psychiatrist. Doesn't matter. But I don't know what I'm going to do. He's like, I guess I've got to do an exorcism.

He's like, I don't know how to do one. He's like, I guess I know what to do. Does he contact the church? Well, he's running out of time because she's so gone. He's like, I've got to do something quickly. So he's like, okay, Carrie, I'm coming to your house. And she's like, okay, doc, I'd love your help. As he's running out of his office, he looks at his desk. And for some reason, he grabs this crystal ball that he had gotten at like some medical fair a few weeks ago in a swag bag.

And it's like a crystal, like a cheesy crystal ball with a chain on it. You like hang it from something. I don't know. And he's like, he just grabs it without thinking. He's like, maybe all this will come in handy. He rushes over to her house and he has another doctor with him to like oversee everything. But he's like, um, okay, we're going to try something, Carrie. And he has no idea what to do. He's just totally winging it. And he's like, takes her under hypnosis and he's commanding that Bonnie comes out.

Nothing happens. Bonnie doesn't want to come out. No sign of her, no alters, just nothing's working. It's like the spirit knows. The doctor that's with him is like, write something on a piece of paper and he looks at it and it says, take her deeper. And he's like, I don't know what that means. But he tries it anyway. He's like, all right, Carrie, you're going to go even deeper. This seems to do something because at this moment, she becomes highly agitated. And he said, she told me she wanted to get rid of Bonnie because

because she had no idea that Bonnie existed it had never even come up it was just a suggestion from this psychic he hasn't even told her that Bonnie is a thing yeah and all of a sudden she's like I gotta get it out of me please doc she's like please doc you gotta get her out of me she's been with me for so long she's destroying my life you gotta get her out of me and she's begging for help now so there's some knowing there yeah for some reason he's like I

I gotta, I gotta be authoritative. He's seen like the exorcism movies. The priest is like commanding in control. So in a booming voice, he's like, I have to be commanding. He says, I command Bonnie. I command you to leave Carrie's body.

Now for his patient's effect and in his mind, he's like, this is all like placebo. He just thinks this is like a psychological technique. It's theater. It's theater to help her break out of the psychology of it. He holds the crystal ball above her head. He's holding the chain.

And he says, above your head is a crystal ball. He says, Bonnie, I command you to leave her body and go into the crystal ball. And he's like getting louder and louder. And he's staring at her. And he's like, wherever the spirits go, go there and leave Carrie. Go into the crystal ball. And he's like, God, in his mind, he's like, God, hopefully something will happen. He looks up. The crystal ball is going...

It's spinning like crazy. And he's not spinning it. Not subconsciously like, you know, weird muscle movements or anything. He's like, maybe I was doing it, but it was weird. The crystal ball is going wild. And he says, Bonnie, go into the crystal ball. And he says, Carrie, if you can hear me, as soon as Bonnie leaves your body, raise your index finger. And the crystal ball's going. And eventually Bonnie's like, she raises her finger and the crystal ball just goes.

Oh, okay. And stops. And when she comes out, she's like, oh my God, that was incredible. She claims she's gone. She's like, Bonnie, I don't know what you did, but that spirit is gone. She claims she felt some force coming up her body and going out of her head into the crystal ball and

And he's like, again, this is all like hypnosis to him. This is all suggestion, not really real spiritually. He's a bit freaked out, but he's like, all right, Carrie, now it's gone and you will be back to your normal self and you will not be bothered by this spirit and you'll proceed with your integration with your other selves. I like his improbabilities. He just makes it up. He said the whole thing took like two and a half minutes.

What do you do with a crystal ball? Well, he calls the psychic doctor and he's like, he's holding it out. He's like, what do I do with this thing? The doctor's like, you must bury it immediately under the full moon. So he has to go out into this local park and he digs a hole in the public park and he sees like an earthworm crawling in there and he thinks maybe the spirit will go into that, but he just buries this thing in the park and

I don't know if multiple personality earthworms are a thing, but you never know. Well, the doctor, the psychic doctor does another scan of her and he's like, you got her out. She was in the ball. Like you successfully got the spirit out. But he says, Carrie has her own darkness and this is not going to solve all your problems. You have to deal with her own darkness. And that's the thing as well. It's like people that are suffering from a mental disturbance,

It's like they will have this as like an added on, you know, problem because they're already dealing with an emotional disturbance. And that just leaves their auric field or, you know, whatever the energy is vulnerable to these things. Well, eventually this ultra violent alter personality comes through. The male? The male that she created? No, her name's Wanda. And she tries to kill Kerry's husband.

And he obviously leaves her. How? She tries to stab him or something multiple times and he just runs out of the house and leaves her. She divorces him and eventually marries a broke alcoholic guy. Why not? They're together for like three months.

One day she flips out and this Wanda character takes control of Kerry's body and starts trying to kill him. And he's like struggling with her in the kitchen. Why hasn't she been institutionalized? She's in and out. She's in and out. And she has these periods of like, she's okay.

But she's in and out of... So she's being dealt with under mental health grounds. Yes. And so the husband, the new husband, calls Dr. Allison. And he's like, you've got to get over here now. I don't know what's going on with her. She's totally changed. She's acting really strangely. Of course, Dr. Allison knows what's going on. He drives straight over. He proceeds to describe, like, when he gets there, she's back to normal and she's, like, got her shopping bags and everything. She's just come back from the shop. She's like, oh...

Dr. Allison, it's so good for you to visit. How you been? And he's like, goes up and shakes her hand. And then she's like, I'm going to kill you. I'm going to kill you. So this is another time in his career that he's being attacked by a crazed person. She says it was like fighting Mike. Well, he says it's like fighting Mike Tyson. Yeah. Like. Yeah, the energy. He's.

Her arms were like metal rods. No, it's like they're on meth because it's like they have whatever the mechanism is for preventing muscle damage. It's like that gets turned off and it's just crazy. She crunches him in the balls, like clocks him in the chin. He's down for the count. The husband's trying to hold her back. He gets knocked out. He calls the police.

Two cops arrive and she's back to normal. She's like, I don't know what happened. Are you okay, doctor? The police arrive. They're like, is everything okay? And they're like, we were just beaten up. Now this woman, she's like five foot one. And the cops are like, what? She beat you up? And they're about to leave. And she's like, thanks for coming off us. I'm going to kill you. She starts fighting the cops. She knocks out one of the cops. It takes five police to take her down.

Eventually, the only thing that gets them to take her down is occasionally that a child alter would come in and be like, do I get to ride in the police car? Will you turn on the siren? And this is like as she's strapped to the gurney and they're taking her to the hospital.

And then she's like, trying to kill them again. You've got to feel sad for these people, though. Like, it must be a really awful thing to go through. They take her to the hospital and eventually she's discharged. She goes home. She had a stash of sedatives she had hidden. She took them all with a slug of vodka. Her new husband comes home, finds her dead in the shower. She killed herself.

And he said, for me, Carrie's death brought a soul-searching re-evaluation of who I was and where I was going. He said it was the most painful experience I've ever endured and I wish to God I had been alert enough to prevent the suicide. He totally blamed himself for

He said, I still had others who needed help. I moved forward, older, sadder, and with an ache in my heart that diminishes with time but will never fully disappear. And so I've really skimmed that story, but it's really brutal, and he's really hurt by this. And he doubles down his efforts to really do anything he can to help these people. And through many patients, ultimately, he learns how to integrate.

And it's usually through that internal self helper, that higher being. Working with that higher being, he says every single patient has them. And if you can bring them out, they're like the ultimate psychologist. They know everything that's required to mentally and spiritually heal this person. And he says, if you just work with them, you can achieve integration with these clients. One of his first successes was Babs.

she was hugely obese, like 350 pound woman, like massive. Um, she eventually came in and admitted to him that she would have blackouts and get this. She admitted she missed an entire year of high school. From a blackout. Yeah. So who was driving for that entire year? One of the alters. Um, the, the first altar she met was the one who raised her children. So it's like she would take extended breaks where these other personalities would come through and

And is it just that she's in some void or? She just has no memory. Right. It's just gone. All that time's gone. But eventually this Tammy comes through and Tammy's the inner self helper. And it's basically like, all right, these are all the issues you've got to deal with her. These are the alters. This is what we've got to do, doc. Help me help you and we can help me. Yeah.

And he followed, this is the first time he's like, all right, let's do everything you want. And he becomes to implicitly trust this internal helper. And he asked the question, like, it's a good question. Why should I trust them? Like, why should I believe this internal? How do you know who is who? And he says, because I verify the information they give me. For example, this girl that comes through this Babs and Tammy, the helper, Tammy, she

comes in and writes him a big essay on her entire life. And this Tammy personality, this internal self-helper, is describing things that happened when she was one year old in a crib that she couldn't possibly know.

But this higher being knows all of it. It's like this trauma is related to when she was two years old and she was in the crib with this dirty uncle who came in. It's like all of this is laid out. And he said in later hypnotic sessions with the real patient and her psyche, all of these things were confirmed. Maybe not the really early ones, but all the other ones. So we just came to implicitly trust these internal self-helpers.

And they were like the perfect psychiatrist in every individual. It's like they have this inbuilt spiritual guide to help them. So she successfully integrates this woman into

And as he proceeds through these case histories, I just want to touch upon some of the fascinating aspects that appear. For one, there's like a mind palace, which is what I called it. But these altars describe where they go when they're not in control of the body. And it's like a realm inside your mind. That makes sense, though. I mean, as much as it sounds silly, it makes sense. Like each of them has their own room.

And if they're like a destructive evil personality, their room is like painted red and black and they've got like death metal posters and it's really dark. And then there's ones that are, you know, like the helpers and they've got like a nice nursery set up with soft colors and they've got their own rooms. They have, there's like a waiting room to get control of the body.

Oh, so that's like the spotlight. Yeah. They describe this room and it's like some of them say there's nice couches in there and there's like a water bottle thing and you get your water and you just got to wait. It's like the waiting room.

And that's where you basically enter into the consciousness. You get control of the body. They say if you're in control of the body and there's an altar who wants to take over, you start to get a migraine. And this is always, these migraines come through. And you can fight against it, but the migraine keeps getting worse and worse and worse. Which is debilitating as well. And then they relinquish themselves. They give into it. And then the altar can jump in from the waiting room, take control of the body. They describe...

there's like areas within this realm inside the person where you just don't go.

They're like, there's these dark areas with these strange shapes in the darkness, things looking at you that you can't see. There's these odd structures. It's almost like they're describing weird monoliths in these regions within the person. One alter said, if you touch them, they actually hurt you. They damage you. Are they like thoughts or is it? He doesn't know. I can't begin to imagine. He doesn't know. It's like this dark hell realm within the individual.

And there's things lurking there waiting to get out. There's also that internal self helper, that higher being is also in this internal space, but separate. It has its own kind of dimension that is a higher level and the altars can't access it, but it can come down to them. It can converse with them. It can give them instructions. It can try and help them talk to them. All these altars can talk with each other. They have a meeting room where they can all gather.

Uh, one of them said that if I want to just talk to one altar, we can create a bubble around ourselves. So the other altars can't hear what we're talking about. So they can like scheme and conspire with each other. Um,

There's also another higher space that they're all aware of, but can't necessarily see or access where they say the others are. The others? Yeah. As in more potential personalities? They describe them, they're kind of like angels. They come across as higher beings and they're in this other realm that's above the I, the internal self helper. It's like some angelic heavenly area, still within the person, within the mind.

But it's where sometimes they get instructions from there or they get directions from there. It's so complex. And this is what you come away with is like psychiatry, especially considering that it's a Western materialist view.

It's like the iceberg analysis doesn't even do it justice. No. You haven't even scratched the surface. I know that's a cliche as well, but it's like you really haven't. Like you scratch away the paint and there's so many more layers. It's barely a sliver of what we are. He talks about violent integrations where patients he has helped who do manage to integrate. It's not freaking easy. Like some of them describe in these internal realms. Because they don't want to reintegrate.

Well, it's like, yeah, the altar that they're trying to integrate doesn't want any part of it. So in these internal realms, they find themselves on a battlefield dressed in armor and leading an army of like creatures sometimes or other altars.

is one of these powerful alters who's got under control. And they're dressed in armor, like leading this army. And it's literally a fight to the death. And he says he's had these cases where they're in like a mental institution. And the staff know because the staff have seen this before and they just basically clear the room so they don't hurt themselves. And they're just like, go for it.

it yeah and he said they've watched as like one patient he gives an example she's screaming i'm gonna destroy you in this evil voice and then her real voice comes through is like i will never give in like i will never let you win i'm in control it's like this goes on for half an hour punching herself in the face strangling herself and each time they describe this brutal battle

with one of these alters who wants control of the body. Now, ultimately, in the cases where they succeed, and he says most of the time they succeed. Well, I was going to ask that, as in the

the ones where the alternate ego gets through. And he says this without any bias. He says, this is just what I've observed. And he says, maybe this is because a lot of these patients that I've dealt with come from a Christian background and this is just in their psyche. But he says they win if they call God. Like if they say, God help me in Jesus's name or whatever it is, they will win. They will defeat that other altar and gain control of the body.

So that's why he says there's a spiritual aspect to this. That's the title of the book, the spiritual nature of this. So would calling upon a higher power, you know, people can be agnostic about this kind of stuff. Does that work as well? Or is it specifically like a Westernized Christian thing? Well, again, he says that's just the cases he's had. So he doesn't mention a case where it's like, I call on Buddha or whatever to fight.

I presume it would be the same because it's the same principle. You're calling on God. I guess it doesn't matter what your faith is. But these are very violent integrations. There's a fascinating section at the end where he talks about male cases, right? So one of them I mentioned to you earlier, Mark Petrov. He came in because he came to – all he remembers is leaving work. He comes to –

And he's standing in someone's yard he doesn't recognize. And there's a house in front of him and it's on fire. It's just completely burning down. He's like, where am I? What's going on? He looks down. He's holding a can of gasoline and he's got a lighter in his hand. Oh, no. And he's like, what the hell is going on? He's arrested. He had burnt down six homes.

While he had lost consciousness. Now he's brought in, obviously he's referred to Ralph because Dr. Allison is now the go-to guy for these cases. He's referred to by the courts and it all started when, again, this childhood trauma, he was on a family vacation and there was, his mother was driving and there was an accident.

And he saw his mother beheaded in this accident. Right. And that's when this altar was created. And cause he blamed himself for the death because he was the one that wanted to go home early. And because they were going home early, they got in this crash. And this altar that comes through is Carl. Carl's the one that's angry. Carl's blames himself. Carl's the one that likes to burn houses down. And he came through, this was the age of seven. Um,

Then he got involved in crime. So this alter Carl, he was involved in organized crime. He was involved in drug shipments and smuggling. But he's organizing all this stuff in the background. Well, he was recruited for jobs where, you know, he was working with organized criminals. And he got away several times because when he was interviewed by police-

an innocent alter would come in. Alibi him somehow. Well, it was just so convincing. Like this innocent 16 year old alter who for all intents and purposes wasn't involved because he wasn't conscious. And the police are so convinced they're like, this is an out guy. And he got away. Like several times he got away from major crimes because- Until he burnt houses down, obviously. Well then, yeah, this Carl guy. Okay. So this is where it gets super freaking weird. And I'll finish on this story.

So this is the guy that ended up going into Dr. Allison's office. And yeah, so Carl is this alter that's burning down the houses and he's under police supervision. And, you know, Dr. Allison is seeing him. Working for Dr. Allison was this girl named Leela. And she had multiple personality disorder as well. And he was helping her, but she was working for him. She was running the biofeedback machine. And she had an alter named Esther.

And this is what I was telling you at the start of the show. One day, Carl comes in, in control of the kid's body, Mark's body. And Esther is in control of Leela's body. What are the odds, though, that he's got a staffer working for him that's also got an ego issue? I know. It's like he really wanted to help her and he wanted to give her a job. He knew. Yeah, he knew that she had MPD. And they meet each other and they're like, all right, we've got to get together. We've got to get control of these bodies and let's hook up.

And so they do this. They get even more and more in control of their respective bodies. Eventually, they start dating. He moves into her home. And when the doc hears about this, he's like, this is outrageous. Like, we've got to put a stop to this. But

He couldn't control what they do outside of work. Of course not. He can't control his staff. So eventually they move in together. Now, Mark's parole officer, the arson guy, calls Dr. Allison and is like, what is going on? How could you allow this? You've got to put a stop to this. At least they should be married. And he's like, yeah, I don't agree with it either, but I can't stop them. They're both like legal adults.

Um, he's overruled and the guy proposes like Carl proposes to this woman with the altar and they plan a wedding. And of course, Dr. Allison gets invited to the wedding proposal. So he goes to this wedding rehearsal, sorry. And while they're doing the wedding rehearsal, he said, Lila, the girl that works for him,

She undergoes this transformation. That's the one I was describing where she's doing the rehearsal. She's walking down the aisle in her wedding dress and she comes through. She's like, what's going on? Why am I getting married? Now, here's the twist. This is where he talks about these false personalities. Leela, who was working for him for all these years and who he was treating,

wasn't the original personality. Right. That's what I was wondering. Are there cases of where an alter personality does take over, takes control? Yeah. It was an alter that had taken control for so long, it had basically become the main consciousness. But in this moment of this wedding rehearsal, in comes Susan, who had left at the age of three. Wow.

And it turns into a disaster because despite everything like going horribly, the wedding takes place the next day. And I'm going to tell you the story after the break. Awesome. How horribly wrong it goes. Oh, wow. Absolute disaster. That's coming up on PLOS. If you want to get access to PLOS, head to mysteriousuniverse.org forward slash PLOS. Sign up today. Arse slapping gnomes coming up. That's what you sign up for PLOS for.

I can get into some of that. Yeah, see, I'm sure there's a sub-category of people that'd be really into that. That's how the alter Benjamin Grundy that inhabits this body was created. My real personality was slapped by a gnome when I was 16 years old, which created me, which is why I'm here today. I doubt that.

Yeah, that thing that came through the window, it was just a gnome going to slap you. That was it. A gnome with a thick ass. Minds in Many Pieces is the book by Dr. Ralph Allison, revealing the spiritual side of multiple personality disorder. And yet, towards the end, there's full cases of spirit possession, which I might mention at a later date. Yeah, you can't avoid it.

It's unavoidable when you're talking about these things because I think even now, isn't multiple personality disorder still considered to be... It's not the way we talk about it or these authors talk about it. It's just another mental illness and it's just a disorder and it can be treated with drugs. Yeah, again, it's like materialism. Yeah, yeah. The Jungian model doesn't match. So spirit attachment would never cross...

like the mainstream profession. Well, the biggest clue is dealing with one of these alter personalities and the alter's like, yeah, sometimes when they're having sex with a man because it's a woman that he's in, this spirit goes, well, I jump into the man's body so I can have sex with her. So it's basically...

a spirit that gets attracted to one of the altars of this woman. Oh, I see. So he jumps in her body. Now, when the altar gets control and tries to have sex with a man, this spirit jumps into the body of the man and has sex with this. So it's really controlled. Yeah. And when they're finished having sex, his calling card is he always pinches her on the ass really hard. That's how she knows she was actually having sex with this spirit that she hates and she hates it. And it always, that's its calling card.

So yeah, that's coming up and we'll describe the wedding disaster after the break, but that's a wrap for this free show. If you want to get access to our plus extension coming up, mysteriousuniverse.org forward slash plus sign up today, help support your favorite show. You get access to the big extensions we do every single Friday. And of course, if you remember, you get an exclusive show every single Tuesday as well, including, uh,

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