> People’s symptoms frequently evolve according to the labels they’ve been given.
This could be true. But the anecdotes and claims in the article are weak evidence.
> Following Layle’s visit to the psychiatrist, her mother observed, “You’ve been acting more and more autistic since we got the diagnosis.”
Reduced masking after diagnosis is common. Or her mother could have noticed and related behaviors she didn't before.
> In 2006, a student at a Mexican boarding school developed devastating leg pain and had trouble walking; soon hundreds of classmates were afflicted. A fifteenth-century German nun started biting her companions; eventually, the strange hysteria infected convents from Holland to Italy.
This is argument from analogy. Mass hysteria spreads without labels. And it is rare.
> Ian Hacking, the philosopher, argued that such a dynamic fuelled the epidemic of multiple personality disorder in the late twentieth century, and something similar seems to be playing out now with the growing portrayal of dissociative identity disorder, the current name for M.P.D., on social media.
This is begging the question. People more qualified than a philosopher have argued many perspectives about DID diagnosis.
> One of Kriss’s patients, a student who went by Haku, developed a multiplicity of selves after being introduced to the concept of dissociative identity disorder. “It’s not that I thought he was faking it,” Kriss recalls. “It seemed more that Haku wanted to have multiple personalities, even if that meant he had to force himself and others to believe in it.”
But does it occur frequently?
This could be true. But the anecdotes and claims in the article are weak evidence.
> Following Layle’s visit to the psychiatrist, her mother observed, “You’ve been acting more and more autistic since we got the diagnosis.”
Reduced masking after diagnosis is common. Or her mother could have noticed and related behaviors she didn't before.
> In 2006, a student at a Mexican boarding school developed devastating leg pain and had trouble walking; soon hundreds of classmates were afflicted. A fifteenth-century German nun started biting her companions; eventually, the strange hysteria infected convents from Holland to Italy.
This is argument from analogy. Mass hysteria spreads without labels. And it is rare.
> Ian Hacking, the philosopher, argued that such a dynamic fuelled the epidemic of multiple personality disorder in the late twentieth century, and something similar seems to be playing out now with the growing portrayal of dissociative identity disorder, the current name for M.P.D., on social media.
This is begging the question. People more qualified than a philosopher have argued many perspectives about DID diagnosis.
> One of Kriss’s patients, a student who went by Haku, developed a multiplicity of selves after being introduced to the concept of dissociative identity disorder. “It’s not that I thought he was faking it,” Kriss recalls. “It seemed more that Haku wanted to have multiple personalities, even if that meant he had to force himself and others to believe in it.”
But does it occur frequently?