wow i really enjoyed reading your comment! i hope it won’t be stereotypically portrayed myself… but let’s wait… btw do you know some series that represents it well? and do you happen to be also interested in personality disorders?
The hard part about finding rep, aside from media lacking it in general, is that every system is different and will have different opinions. One thing can be amazing representation for some, but lacklustre for others. I haven’t been able to find many good series’s. There’s only two I’ve found that aren’t horribly misrepresenting dissociative disorders.
- Absolutely Ruined Love
- Adam no Rokkotsu
And yes! I do have interest in personality disorders as well as I have two myself. The only two I haven’t looked into yet are the Schizoid and Schizotypal ones. I’m most knowledgeable in cluster B and C types as well as OCPD. Aside from personality and dissociative disorders, I’m also quite knowledgeable in anxiety, depressive, and other neurodivergent disorders like ADHD and ASD!
thank you for your answer!!!! i’ll check these comics right away,,, and that’s so interesting and great id love to talk with you more but idk if it’s a good place for that lmaoaoaoao
The only other thing I’m on is Discord, @ tobysopp
I’d love to chat more about this! I love psychology:) although I’m no professional and I haven’t formally studied psychology, I love looking into the disorders and my friends often refer to me as their “psychiatrist friend” lol they tend to come to me for advice on their disorders or what they think they could have ^^;
OMG I LOVE ABSOLUTELY RUINED LOVE, the plots genuinely intrigued me
I enjoyed reading your comment so much too! could I ask what other stereotypes you dislike when it comes to representing DID in fiction?
OCPD mentioned! Yay! It’s not everyday that you find people who know about us :’)
Lemme think…. For stereotypes, I’d say having child alters be super childish. If they’re in an adult body, they typically know all these adult things, it’s internally that they’re a child. Although yes, some systems will mentally or physically age regress when a child alter fronts, but it’s not all that common. Plenty of systems will express that their little parts can drive, will try to smoke, cook, etc. Whether they’re good at it or not will vary, but they can certainly partake and know a lot of things the body or host will. And also media will often times exaggerate DID but it’s generally covert. People can’t usually tell, sometimes not even the person themself will know. A person can go their whole life never knowing they have DID, or they’ll get diagnosed way later in life. The whole point of the disorder is that the brain separates and each part will pretend to be the host so they can survive.
Oh, but also, media portraying systems as having an “original part”, though it’s less stereotype and more just… misinformation. DID and other dissociative disorders are more like a broken plate. You can piece all the parts together (“final fusion”) but theres always the chance they’ll break off again. Each part is piece of a whole. All part of the same brain, the same being. The brain just separated them as a form of protection. The “original part” is an outdated concept/theory as research landed on the better theory of children having ego states (personalities like “sad”, “angry”, “hungry”, etc), which in DID/OSDD, the brain will put up amnesia. barriers around these ego states so its not overwhelmed by trauma. Which is why DID/OSDD first develops between 4-6 on average.
I can’t believe I didn’t see your comment until now! Ofc! As someone with OCD, I deal with a lot of the stereotypes like cleanliness, perfectionism. organization, etc, so I’m often correcting people. Like when people say “I’m so OCD, I need everything organized all the time!” like no girl, you either have OCPD or you’re just autistic LOL.
I’m going to yap here, as a p-DID system and someone whose special interest is psychology and dissociative disorders. This will be long, and a TL;DR will be at the bottom:). Also, I’m open to any questions regarding these disorders, or even my personal experiences, so feel free to ask anything!
DID is an incorrect diagnosis for Hosu. Unless they really do have blackout amnesia between each other. I was considering OSDD-1a at first, due to Hosu saying he is still Hosu, but I’m thinking it’s closer to OSDD-1b.
With OSDD-1a, the system is made up of alters who are just different versions of the host. For example, theres the “normal” host part, their work self, kid self, angry self, sad self, etc. And at least one or more alters will experience blackout amnesia.
With OSDD-1b, the system has distinct alters who have their own identities. Sometimes, they pretend to be the host (same as DID), but they have their own identity deep down, whether they have their own name yet or not. These systems can still experience types amnesia, such as greyout (partial memory loss) or emotional (not knowing how you felt in a situation), but lack blackout amnesia. Once an OSDD-1b system has an alter show up that had blackout amnesia, the system gets the new diagnosis of DID.
With DID, the system will have both distinct alters with their own identities as well as the blackout amnesia (even if only in one alter). Think of OSDD being two halves of DID.
Then there’s p-DID, which Hosu clearly doesn’t have but I’ll explain it anyway. It’s the exact same as DID, but from a different diagnostic manual. In the ICD-11, they included a new dissociative disorder in addition to what the DSM-5 has. p-DID is only slightly different from DID, with all the same diagnostic criteria, except; people will often describe being “front-stuck”. It’s rare for them (typically the host, but could be anyone) to enter headspace, and will at most, lose control of the body. It’s not impossible for Hosu to have this, as he described watching, but he never said he was stuck watching all the time and he didn’t have control for 2 years.
Unless the second Hosu has his own name and identity—which almost sounds likely with how Hosu talks about him. Referring to him as “that guy”—I’ll be going with the OSDD-1a route. Both known alters are versions of Hosu (that we can tell), and they have had instances where they “forgot”. Though at the end it said he lacked memory loss, just earlier it said there were moments Hosu would forget what happened.
It’s still quite vague rn, and it’s likely the author hasn’t dove too deeply into researching this disorder, but I can’t wait to see how it fleshed out if it does. It’s not always you find representation for dissociative disorders. It’s unfortunate that they seem to be leaning into the “evil alter” stereotype, but hopefully that turns out wrong.
TL;DR: Hosu seems to have OSDD-1a instead of DID due to the symptoms/diagnostic criteria we’ve seen, but I’m waiting to see how the story progresses!