Like forgiveness, discussed in an earlier blog post (https://www.engagingmultiples.com/trap-forgiveness/), the conventional understanding of closure is not necessarily a realistic goal in therapy. In my opinion, there should not be the presumption that is required for healing.
“Closure” or “Need for Closure” (NFC), the latter being often used interchangeably with Need for Cognitive Closure (NFCC), are psychological terms that describe an individual’s desire for a firm answer to a question and an aversion toward ambiguity. The term “need” denotes a motivated tendency to seek out information.
For my DID patients, the notion of closure was generally connected to seeking some outside confirmation that the abuse indeed happened exactly as remembered. In the therapeutic approach I took, the question of confirming the details of the abuse simply weren’t all that important for therapy. It was clear that my DID patients had been terribly traumatized. It was clear that they were, in the present, subject to tremendous fear, anger and dissociation. They all had triggers they might encounter in the present that, when activated, at any given point in time would pull them back into past trauma. The point of therapy was to limit the impact of the past trauma on the present.
To focus on getting some kind of conventional outside confirmation of the details of the abuse misses the point. The details are not something to be healed. Horrible as they were, they are historical experience. there is no magic wand or magic pill to make them undo them. They are, simply and brutally, the traumatic experiences that resulted in DID. The problem to be addressed, and the injury to be healed, is the past trauma still affecting the patient in the present. No therapy – no closure – is going to take away the fact that traumatic events occurred. What therapy can do is support healing from the traumatic event(s) and reclaiming one’s life in the present.
It is instructive that many concentration camp survivors – even those that were liberated 70 years earlier – continue to be impacted by the intensity of their experience. Consider that society in general does not discount their experiences. Indeed, they are now usually honored as survivors bearing witness to horror and holding a critical collective memory. Yet, whatever support they receive, the survivors of the Nazi concentration camps still carry their wounds. How they carry those wounds, and how it impacts their lives, may be instructive for treating survivors of child abuse – whether or not they have DID.
Those that survived the camps seemed to be able to access a critical desire – the desire to bear witness. This bearing witness can often be linked to the anger they experienced in being tortured, in being treated as if they were not even human. It is the drive to survive and bear witness that has genuine power, but it is not based on a need for closure. From a DID perspective, I would argue that this highlights the importance of the angry alter(s), who often see fighting for survival as necessary to be able to call out, at some point, the perpetrators.
Those from the camps that continue to speak out in their nineties do not appear to be concerned with anyone outside confirming whether or not their memory is true. They have the confidence that the events happened. There is documentary evidence showing that such things happened. If anything, whether it is seen as spiritual or moral, they perceive that their obligation is to warn humanity of the danger of dehumanizing one’s perception of another person. This is quite different that conventional understandings of closure.
There are a few critical points that distinguish DID patients from concentration camp survivors. First, DID patients were usually assaulted as individuals by individuals close to them – not by others from outside their immediate community. Concentration camp survivors could see that their horror was something they experienced communally – no one denied their suffering in the camp.
Second, it was after the war, usually decades after the war, that holocaust deniers attacked survivors as liars. However, this was a minority that was confronted by the majority of outside powers. It is the opposite of the experience of DID patients where denial of their abuse history begins almost from the moment of the abuse. That denial comes from the abusers, from people they try to communicate to about it, and, based on the usually overwhelming positions of power of their abusers, the abused children themselves .
Third, concentration camp victims were of all ages while most DID patients were abused at an extremely young age – before their ordinary ego structures coalesced, before they developed conceptual defenses and abilities to process their trauma experience. Most very young children brought to concentration camps were killed quickly, as they were too young to be worked to death. This was the case unless they were singled out for use in medical experiments by the horrific Dr. Mengele.
In DID treatment, if one posits the therapeutic goal as closure, then notion of closure must be framed as something attainable. It can be likened to survival and witnessing by the concentration camp survivors but in this case it is to warn humanity of the horrific danger and consequences of child molestation and other abuse. This appears to be happening, finally, as more and more victims of child abuse become willing to talk about their trauma history.
While there is likely no “closure” for the vast majority of DID patients in terms of external confirmation of the abuse, there is the very real possibility of hope, of joy, and of liberation in reclaiming one’s life. This hope, joy and liberation is the best and genuine closure.
