Dissociative Identity Disorder: In the 1970s psychiatrist began to diagnose people with having ‘multiple personalities.’ In an attempt to define what ‘multiple personalities’ are more people were diagnosed with having ‘multiple personalities.’ At first, people would fit the expected symptoms but then cases diverged from the expected norm more and more. These deviations from the norm, for example, someone having 17 identified personalities rather than the norm of 2 -3, then got added to the diagnosis criteria and became part of the standard set of symptoms. It then became part of the therapy for having ‘multiple personalities’ for psychiatrists to try to elicit more and more alters, because it became expected that people had more alters. 

The change to Dissociative Identity Disorder as the name of the condition marks an evolution in how the disorder is classified, patients are no longer expected to come with a whole lot of distinct personalities. 


Dissociative Identity Disorder as an Example of 'Making Up People'

Autism: In 1992 in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, autism was defined by “abnormal introversion and egocentricity, acceptance of fantasy rather than reality, and infantile behavior.” By 2000 the same dictionary noted autism as “ a psychiatric disorder of childhood characterized by marked deficits in communication and social interaction, preoccupation with fantasy, language …” the dictionary moved to language that denoted autism as a distinct disorder, and as a childhood disability. Today we have a wider autism spectrum, it is widely known that autism is not just a childhood disorder.

Before 1975 however, while autistic individuals from across the autism spectrum existed the lack of a framework for autism that included those people meant being for example a “late diagnosed autistic person” or someone with “psychological demand avoidance autism” was not ‘way to be a person’ because that wording and that framework did not exist. People had the traits but did not experience themselves in this way. 


Autism Spectrum Disorder as an example of Making Up People. 

- Dissociative Identity Disorder
- Autism Spectrum Disorder

University of Wisconsin - Madison

'Making up people' is the concept that by studying and categorizing types of people, those classifications change to better reflect the societal views of the characteristics of individuals within that classification. By studying people we create kinds of people - ways people can be embodied - that did not exist prior to classification.

In this article, Sparti proposes that we can use the model of making up people to understand the formation of disabilities.

Making Up People - On Some Looping Effects of the Human Kind - Institutional Reflexivity of Social Control?

Identity is the product of a formation process that is shaped by societal context, personal identity is not a fixed or self-contained entity, but it is rather created through the process of naming, and recognition.

Our society works to classify individuals whose societies current system of classifications does not have a way of classifying. We create classifications to institutionalize forms of recognition and to bring individuals into societal classifications.

Transient mental illnesses are often more ripe for classification than other forms of disability.

What leads to us 'making up people'?

(a) Classification - defining something as a disorder or condition

(b) People that are exhibiting either physiological or physical distress that is attempting to be categorized

(c) Institutions - ranging from clinics, professional organizations, and the press

(d) Knowledge - the presumptions that are taught, disseminated, and refined within the context of the institution

(e) Experts or professionals who generate the knowledge, judge its validity and use it in their practice

Institutions (c ) grant these experts (e) legitimacy to place people (b) into classifications (a) that are based on existing institutional knowledge (d).


What is needed for the process of 'making up people'?

We operate in different social circles of recognition, and use different identification stocks with distinctive categories and names to assign meaning in different social circles. 

Self recognition, is the operation through which individuals establish a connection or coherent continuity - an inner solidarity- among received recognitions, or ways of being 'made up'.

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