ABSTRACT
In the second case, Ed Mendelowitz ponders one of the most perplexing conditions known to human science — the extreme dissociative disorder known as multiple personality. While this case is ostensibly about an extraordinary and raried condition, it is also about the metaphorical insights oered by that condition. In his riveting study of “Kristina,” Dr. Mendelowitz articulates a multifaceted understanding of an internal universe, replete with selves, societies, and spirits. While it is plain that Kristina is extraordinary — just witness her drawings — Mendelowitz does not overemphasize this singularity; instead, he shows how Kristina’s individual struggle echoes our collective and indeed human battle to coexist with and integrate our rivaling impulses. Moreover, it is precisely this coexistence — and not the homogenized norm — that is at the heart of Mendelowitz’s stance; our object is not to rid clients of their splits, but to help them form new relationships with those splits — or to put it in the words of his patient: to help them “go along with the ow.”
