Even with the patch, I can not resolve this problem. I can reproduce the problem with the patched version with the following code. My system is:

Python 2.6.4 (r264:75821M, Oct 27 2009, 19:48:32)
IPython 0.10
Platform is Mac OS X (10.5.8) Darwin Kernel Version 9.8.0: Wed Jul 15 16:55:01 PDT 2009

import multiprocessing as mp

def f(d):
  d['f'] = {}
  d['f']['msg'] = 'I am here'

manager = mp.Manager()
d = manager.dict()

p = mp.Process(target=f, args=(d,))

p.start()
p.join()

print d

d = {}
f(d)

print d

Output:

{'f': {}}
{'f': {'msg': 'I am here'}}