the community of ella.

Diana Kwon; January 2022. scientificamerican.com/magazine/sa VIOLET, age seven and one of Ella's personalities, drew this picture of all the "parts" holding hands, with therapist Rebecca J. Lester in the center. Ella, it eventually became clear, had dissociative identity disorder (DID), a clinical condition in which a person has two or more distinct personalities that regularly take control of the person's behavior, as well as recurring periods of amnesia. As Ella's college graduation approached and we came to the end of our therapy, Ella still wasn't "cured" according to the standard treatment guidelines. With her unique perspective on Ella's internal world across time, Violet became my "key informant" in an anthropological sense as I explored Ella's community of parts. [Extracted from the article]