Creating Hysteria: Women and Multiple Personality Disorder

Reading this acerbic and witty debunking of the Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) diagnosis is like staying long enough in a courtroom to listen to a brilliant prosecuting attorney and then walking out before the defense. Acocella, the coauthor of a psychology textbook, Abnormal Psychology, builds a highly convincing case against mental health professionals whom she portrays as exploiters who prompted the mass hysteria and witch-hunts that have resulted from recovered memory syndrome and the MPD diagnosis. (This book requires a mastery of numerous acronyms.) However, she proceeds to undercut her own argument by destroying all in her path: the child-protection movement, the credibility of women who say they were abused as children, the self-help (AA) movement, the feminist movement, insight-based psychotherapy, "New-Age spirituality" and postmodern theory are just a few of the victims of her sweep. Like all good prosecutors, Acocella has no qualms about using one set of beliefs, events or institutions as evidence and then discrediting the same set when the next stage of her argument requires it. She presents the media, for example, as having disregarded the truth in its pursuit of ratings when it embraced MPD and its offshoots, but the same media evolves into a champion of justice in her appraisal of its support of the False Memory Syndrome (FMS) Foundation. "Managed care" is villainous when it supports FMS but heroic when it balks at financing long-term treatment of MPD or indeed any prolonged therapy. One of the many ideologies she savages (while alternately using it to prove her points) is social constructivism. In fact, a broader sense of truth as a shifting and culturally located construct would have made her argument far more convincing. Agent, Robert Comfield. (Sept.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Based on the premise that mental disorders go in and out of vogue, this book traces the development of the Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD)/Recovered Memory movement from its beginnings (as the story of Sybil) to its heyday (in the 1980s). New Yorker writer Acocella (Abnormal Psychology) uses case studies, research, and original analysis to show that the movement is itself a form of social hysteria. Although it serves the needs of troubled women and the "therapy establishment," concern about this disorder deflects attention from what Acocella considers to be more serious social ills. This book, which reads like a well-written, expanded journal article, competently covers recent psychological history, including the Satanic cult scares of the 1970s. However, while criticizing the science of MPD, Acocella posits thinly substantiated claims against feminism, intellectuals, and the psychiatric establishment for encouraging the diagnosis. Recommended for comprehensive women's studies and psychology collections.AAntoinette Brinkman, Southwest Indiana Mental Health Ctr. Lib., Evansville
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Acocella is well known as a dance critic (Mark Morris, 1990), but she is also coauthor of a text on abnormal psychology; her current book began as a 1998 New Yorker article. She deftly links the epidemic of hysteria diagnoses in the late nineteenth century to the explosion of multiple personality disorder (MPD) diagnoses over recent decades; both periods, she maintains, reflected "widespread, bitter intellectual debate, a war between biological and psychological psychiatry, a fascination with the occult, an obsession with sex and an explosion of pornography, a new concern over cruelty to children, feminism and opposition to feminism." Acocella traces MPD's history; the therapy applied and its theoretical scientific basis; and the trajectory (crisis, outcry, retrenchment) of public attitudes toward the related issues of recovered memory, MPD, and satanic ritual abuse. Feminism and the child-protection movement bear some of the blame for MPD diagnosis and treatment abuses, but Acocella argues that these abuses have weakened the credibility of both movements as well as of insight therapy in general. Mary Carroll

"At long last we have a volume that takes a hard look at the"epidemic" of multiple personality disorders and comes up with somesurprising conclusions." (Aaron T. Beck, M.D., University Professorof Psychiatry, Department of Medicine, University ofPennsylvania)

"Creating Hysteria exposes one of the most frightening mentalroller coaster rides taken by thousands of people in modern times.Joan Acocella brilliantly illuminates how the mental healthprofession spearheaded, perhaps inadvertently, a fin-de-sieclehysteria, the fallout from which will take us into the nextmillennium. Anyone who has ever been interested in mental healthshould read this book." (Elizabeth Loftus, president, AmericanPsychological Society)

"A remarkable expose of an embarrassing and mischievous epidemicinstigated by a small group of 'multiple personality' proponents.This book provides ample warning for patients and therapistsalike." (Herbert Spiegel, pschiatrist, expert on "Sybil"case)

"Multiple personality disorder is both fascinating and sad, but thestory of its recent social evolution is deeply disturbing. CreatingHysteria tells a gripping tale that will captivate anyoneinterested in the pathology of the human mind and the culturalforces that shape it." (Daniel L. Schacter, professor and chair ofpsychology, Harvard University)

"As Acocella makes devastatingly clear, MPD was a diseaseessentially created by unethical or incompetent therapists andimposed upon their vulnerable female patients. Creating Hysteriatells a sorrowful, infuriating story that compels and deservesattention." (WAndy Kaminer, public policy fellow, RadcliffeCollege)

In 1989 Elizabeth Carlson, a Minneapolis housewife, went to a psychotherapist for help with depression. Before long the therapist suggested to her that perhaps her problem was actually multiple personality disorder (MPD), a condition that according to the "experts" was connected to childhood abuse. With coaching from the therapist-and under heavy medication-Carlson soon came up with more than twenty-five personalities, including Wild Child, Sister Mary Margaret, and Little Miss Fluff. Horrifying abuse memories invaded her consciousness. She had been molested, she said, by her parents, her grandparents, her great-grandparents. Her family was part of a satanic cult. They raped and killed. They aborted babies and ate the afterbirth. Or did they?In Creating Hysteria Joan Acocella tells how, over the past three decades, thousands of women seeking help for various psychological problems were told that they had multiple personality disorder and were sucked into this nightmarish therapy. In session after session, under their therapists' prompting, they produced "memories"-and screaming reenactments-of childhood victimization. Asked to search within themselves for hidden personalities, they came up with entire squadrons: children, harlots, angels, devils. Prior to the 1970s, multiple personality disorder was considered an exotically rare condition. But beginning in the 1980s, an estimated 40,000 people, most of them women, had been initiated into this newly popular disorder.This groundbreaking book describes how a group of reckless therapists used hypnosis, drugs, and sheer persuasion to mold their patients' symptoms into multiple personality disorder. While these practitioners were publishing books and running workshops on how to "spot" MPD, the patients were languishing in hospitals--in some cases for years. They sacrificed their marriages, their jobs. Some even lost their children.Creating Hysteria analyzes the forces that fed into the MPD epidemic: media se

In 1989 Elizabeth Carlson, a Minneapolis housewife, went to a psychotherapist for help with depression. Before long the therapist suggested to her that perhaps her problem was actually multiple personality disorder (MPD), a condition that according to the "experts" was connected to childhood abuse. With coaching from the therapist-and under heavy medication-Carlson soon came up with more than twenty-five personalities, including Wild Child, Sister Mary Margaret, and Little Miss Fluff. Horrifying abuse memories invaded her consciousness. She had been molested, she said, by her parents, her grandparents, her great-grandparents. Her family was part of a satanic cult. They raped and killed. They aborted babies and ate the afterbirth. Or did they?

In Creating Hysteria Joan Acocella tells how, over the past three decades, thousands of women seeking help for various psychological problems were told that they had multiple personality disorder and were sucked into this nightmarish therapy. In session after session, under their therapists' prompting, they produced "memories"-and screaming reenactments-of childhood victimization. Asked to search within themselves for hidden personalities, they came up with entire squadrons: children, harlots, angels, devils. Prior to the 1970s, multiple personality disorder was considered an exotically rare condition. But beginning in the 1980s, an estimated 40,000 people, most of them women, had been initiated into this newly popular disorder.

This groundbreaking book describes how a group of reckless therapists used hypnosis, drugs, and sheer persuasion to mold their patients' symptoms into multiple personality disorder. While these practitioners were publishing books and running workshops on how to "spot" MPD, the patients were languishing in hospitals―in some cases for years. They sacrificed their marriages, their jobs. Some even lost their children.

Creating Hysteria analyzes the forces that fed into the MPD epidemic: media sensationalism, Christian fundamentalism, the culture wars, and feminism. (Though ruinous to women, this diagnosis was endorsed by many feminists.) Money was another factor. MPD, the experts said, took years to cure. An MPD diagnosis was one way of getting around the new restrictions placed on psychotherapy by managed care.

Eventually, victims of this cruel hoax discovered what had happened to them and began suing their therapists. As a result, the MPD empire is now crumbling. In her brilliant concluding chapters, Acocella describes the damage this bizarre craze did to the profession of psychotherapy, to the child-protection movement, and to women's rights. The patients ultimately triumphed, but the wreckage will take years to clear away.

Manufactured Epidemic: The True Story of MPD

From 1985 to 1995 an estimated 40,000 Americans, most of them women, were told they suffered from multiple personality disorder. Feminists, fundamentalists, and a substantial portion of the mental health community endorsed this "Sybil-ing" of America. Sensation-seeking television talk shows took up the MPD rallying cry. In Creating Hysteria, Joan Acocella tells a riveting tale of therapists betraying their patients, of a psychotherapy profession at war within its own ranks, and finally of expatients rising up and putting an end to the MPD scandal.

"Creating Hysteria exposes one of the most frightening mental roller coaster rides taken by thousands of people in modern times. Joan Acocella brilliantly illuminates how the mental health profession spearheaded, perhaps inadvertently, a fin-de-siècle hysteria, the fallout from which will take us into the next millennium. Anyone who has ever been interested in mental health should read this book."
―Elizabeth Loftus, president, American Psychological Society

"A remarkable exposé of an embarrassing and mischievous epidemic instigated by a small group of 'multiple personality' proponents. This book provides ample warning for patients and therapists alike."
―Herbert Spiegel, psychiatrist, expert on "Sybil" case

"Multiple personality disorder is both fascinating and sad, but the story of its recent social evolution is deeply disturbing. Creating Hysteria tells a gripping tale that will captivate anyone interested in the pathology of the human mind and the cultural forces that shape it."
―Daniel L. Schacter, professor and chair of psychology, Harvard University

"As Acocella makes devastatingly clear, MPD was a disease essentially created by unethical or incompetent therapists and imposed upon their vulnerable female patients. Creating Hysteria tells a sorrowful, infuriating story that compels and deserves attention."
―Wendy Kaminer, public policy fellow, Radcliffe College

JOAN ACOCELLA coauthored the textbook Abnormal Psychology: Current Perspectives, now in its eighth edition. A staff writer for The New Yorker, she is the author of Mark Morris (1993) and the editor of The Diary of Vaslav Nijinsky (1999).