A member of the Plex group
We’ve touched on this topic before, and it’s never a comfortable subject; but it’s pretty unavoidable if you are going to deal with DID from a Christian perspective. I hope I’m not just reiterating what others have already said, but it’s applicable again today because we are embarking on another book-reading about deliverance, and in this case the author actually validates the existence of alters and reality of DID even though his primary topic is deliverance. The title of the book is Two Hours to Freedom by Charles H. Kraft. We approach this topic with extreme care and prayer along with a heavy dose of critical discernment. We subjected ourself to an extreme deliverance experience in which we were freed from demons who had attached themselves to specific personalities but many of us were brainwashed into believing we were demons and others of us were driven so far from consciousness that even though it happened many years ago there are still personalities who have not returned to consciousness. I’m guessing that is a pretty confusing sentence to comprehend and sort out, and I apologize for that, but I don’t know how to put it any better. The pastor who did the deliverances believed all personalities except the birth personality are demons, so he treated all other personalities as demons except for the personality he thought was the birth personality. It’s kind of humorous to to me that the whole time he was acting like he knew what the rest of the world was not discerning enough to figure out he was missing the fact that the personality he was working with was one of the “demons” he was supposedly trying to get rid of for us. Guess I could be accused of having a warped sense of humor but I think it’s funny. You have to admit, it is at least ironic.
Going back to Two Hours to Freedom,Dr. Kraft uses terms including “inner child”, “inner selves”, and “inner persons” to describe younger parts of a person who are quote, “really a personification of memories”. He discusses this under the subheading of Characteristics of Inner Children on pages 85 & 86; and then he distinguishes this from MPD/DID on page 86. This is confusing for us to read because we think of our child personalities as “inner children” as apposed to our “external children” who we gave birth to. Dr. Kraft thinks of his term of “inner children” as a mild form of dissociation. It really makes me wonder just how much he really knows and understands about dissociation and/or DID.
Dr. Kraft addresses the issue of whether a problem is being caused by psychological issues or demonization in the following way (pages 94-98): Most people tend to think there can only be one source of the trouble – either emotional/psychological or spiritual/demon possesion (which Dr. Kraft says is an improper term and should be referred to as a person being demonized instead). Dr. Kraft suggests that most often it is a matter of both being legitimate causes. The emotional/psychological issues are like garbage that attracts the rats, or demons; so both must be dealt with in order to achieve complete freedom from symptoms.
I guess that’s enough to discuss for now, but I think there may be a significant amount of good that can be gained from reading this book more carefully.
