Iatrogenic Identity Disorder

According to a recent conversation with one of the many psychiatrists I saw as a teenager, I'm a different person to whom I used to be. I must have looked somewhat sceptical when he said this, so he reiterated his point: "No, really, compared to the way you were ten years ago, it's like chalk and cheese!"

So, what's going on here? A multiple personality? Routine BPD instability? No, he's just got it wrong: I'm the same person, in a different situation. If we really need a diagnosis for insurance purposes, let's call it Iatrogenic Identity Disorder.

It seems to me that a crucial part of coming to terms with your own experience is to own it: I am the chalk and the cheese. In my worst and most obnoxious moments, I wasn't a different person, depersonalised and excused by some sickness, but merely my younger self, responding to extreme and relentless provocation in an extreme and typically adolescent fashion.

Casting me as "a different person" clearly both reflects and ratifies the notion that the 'mentally ill', i.e. people subject to extreme, unusual or maladaptive emotional and/or perceptual experiences, form a group which is essentially distinct from the so-called 'normal' population. It's not difficult to see how this essentialist thinking contributes to the continuing stigmatisation of the 'mentally ill'.