My understanding of DID and its origins matches your. While dont have it, I did find IFS therapy useful in fixing myself and recognizing similar in other people. It makes sense (to me) that DID is an extreme on a continuum of splitting of the self.
IMHO most people flaunting their DID online, bragging about their others, claiming to be systems, are just attention seekers that are an insult to those with a real problem. The second "D" stands for disorder after all. It's like the teenagers running around claiming all sorts of odd variations on their sexuality - while being virgins. It's cool to be different, but not to falsely claim someone else's difference.
Indeed. One thing I notice is that a requirement for most, if not all, personality disorders is abuse. And when we talk about a disease, we normally know it can manifest itself in different symptoms in different people, but we still say that the person has the disease, and not that specific combination of symtpoms.
So then that got me wondering why is medicine focused on the psychological symptoms and naming their clusters, when the cause is always the same. If a person has a bacterial infection and gets a sore throat, he will get treated for the bacteria. If that same bacteria gives another person diahrrea, he will still get treated for the bacteria. And yet.... with personality disorders medicine is so focused on clusterizing the symptoms and treating those instead of going after the cause. But then again, not more than 60 years ago we still called all personality disorders hysteria and demonic possession, so I'm pretty sure we are in a similar dark age right now, we just happen to think we're more enlightened than we are (like all generations).
IMHO most people flaunting their DID online, bragging about their others, claiming to be systems, are just attention seekers that are an insult to those with a real problem. The second "D" stands for disorder after all. It's like the teenagers running around claiming all sorts of odd variations on their sexuality - while being virgins. It's cool to be different, but not to falsely claim someone else's difference.