An alter who is amnestic for other personalities experiences those periods when alters are in control of the body as "lost time," or blackouts. Such experiences are one of the most frequent symptoms of multiplicity, and they create tremendous bewilderment and confusion. Multiples may "wake up" in unfamiliar situations with no idea where they are, how they got there, or who the people around them are-even though those people may be well known to one of the alter personalities!

One of the consequences of such amnestic episodes is that multiples are frequently accused of lying, since an alter may deny remembering or being responsible for events or actions that occured while another alter controlled the body. Some alters develop exceptional memories to compensate.

In Sybil, the story of Sybil Dorsett's pioneering treatment by Wilbur, Flora Rheta Schreiber described the pragmatic and emotional consequences of lost time. As a result of her amnestic experiences, Sybil remembered, she "found herself floating in and out of blackness":

Disguising the fact, she became ingenious in improvisation, peerless in pretense, as she feigned knowledge of what she did not know. Unfortunately, from herself she couldn't conceal the sensation that somehow she had lost something. Nor could she hide the feeling that increasingly she felt as if she belonged to no one and to no place. Somehow it seemed that the older she got, the worse things became. She began derogating comments: "I'm thin for a good reason: I'm not fit to occupy space."

What happens to alters when they are not in the body is different for different multiples. Cassandra reports that her personalities frequently have out-of-body experiences in which they travel to a non-physical domain which she calls the Third World. In other multiples, alter personalities report residing inside certain regions of the head or body. Some alters "sleep," while others are aware of their inner companions and can watch the activities of whomever is "in the body."

Some multiples have elaborate inner worlds in which they play and communicate with other alters. Some personalities may even live almost entirely within, and rarely or never enter the body. The experience of these and other mysterious alters with no known origin or function often have a surreal or numinous quality quite difficult to convey using ordinary language. A glimpse is provided by one of Milligan's alters who had no name:

"When I'm not asleep and not on the spot," he said, "it's like I'm lying face down on a sheet of glass that stretches out forever, and I can look down through it. Beyond that, in the farthest ground, it seems like stars of outer space, but then there's a circle, a beam of light. It's almost as if it's coming out of my eyes because it's always in front of me. Around it, some of my people are lying in coffins. The lids aren't on them because they're not dead yet. They're asleep, waiting for something. There are some empty coffins because not everyone has come there. David and the other young ones want a chance at life. The older ones have given up hope....David named this place, " he said, "because he made it. David calls it the Dying Place."

Exceptional Abilities

Some multiples learn to use their multiplicity in conscious and constructive ways. Cooperation among alters which exist harmoniously may take many forms.

Alternation of personalities extends time during which a multiple is able to function at peak capacity. A personality who is tired or has used alcohol or drugs for instance, can yield the body to another personality who will be alert, sober and able to continue functioning. A personality who is in pain can yield the body to a more anesthetic personality who does not feel the pain, or to another personality who will remain in the body until he or she can no longer endure the pain and must switch.

Co-consciousness also facilitates cooperation among alter personalities. Using co-consciousness, Milligan's alter selves Arthur and Ragen would observe what was going on in the environment and decide who should be "on the spot." Cassandra's alter personality Celese, too, apparently uses co-conscious processing to continue with the task of visualization and healing even when she is not in the body.

"Parallel processing is not only possible with me, allowing a higher level of productivity than normal," Cassandra has written, "it is also inevitable."

When the pressures of graduate school are beyond the limits of any one person, I call on the others to help me. When I am writing a paper on dichotic hearing, on e of the others is composing the proposal for "my" master's thesis. Someone else has prepared dinner for me and will later clean up the kitchen while I sleep...I can no more prevent the others from working than I can prevent the change of the seasons. Even as I write this, one of the others is probably thinking about something as obtuse as critical flicker frequency. We share the body so the time I am at the typewriter of necessity limits the others use of the physical aspects of the body. It does not prevent anyone of them from using the brain to plan, design, or compose....I think that this is mind wandering deluxe!

Multiples also exhibit other unusual abilities, according to clinicians who have worked with them. These include "perfect" memory (sometimes having a near-photographic quality as well as strong auditory, olfactory and somatic components) and the ability to heal more rapidly than normal. Paranormal experiences are also reported to be common. Are these somehow related to a "passion to survive"?

Multiples also tend to be highly intelligent, perceptive and sensitive. "I've never met a multiple with an IQ of less than 110," said Wilbur at the First International Conference on Multiple Personality, while Dr. David Caul noted that they are exquisitely sensitive to cues and signals. "They can smell a liar at a thousand paces in one-ten thousandth of a second," he said. Are these traits, like their high hypnotizability, somehow related to the capacity for dissociation?

Such purported abilities pose questions and present opportunities for research.

next: Child Abuse And Multiple Personality Disorder