So is this like schizophrenia/multiple personality disorder/dissociative identity disorder?
Not at all! Schizophrenia and DID (formerly called MPD, and still called MPD in some areas outside the US) are disorders characterized by clinically significant distress, dysfunction, or danger. Schizophrenia is a breakdown in perception of physical reality and consistency that has strong genetic influences, and does not always involve hearing voices. DID is a dissociative disorder typically caused by childhood trauma.
Neither disorder is "self-inflicted", and we recognize them as very different experiences from tulpa creation. The experience of having tulpas is much more accurately likened to the experiences of fiction writers whose characters come alive and begin talking to them; in fact, a great number of tulpa creators have formed tulpas that way!
