Multiple Personality Disorder
- Multiple Personality Disorder
(from 1886)
Modern interest in multiple personality disorder may be dated from Pierre Janet’s article on "the doubling of the personality under hypnotism" ("le dédoublement de la personnalité pendant le somnambulisme provoqué") in the Revue philosophique in 1886. Lively interest in the subject continued for about a decade, at which point the theme subsided. In 1957, two psychiatrists at the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta, Corbett H. Thigpen (1919–1999) and Hervey M. Cleckley (1914–1984), described a challenging case of a female patient with supposed "multiple personalities." Although this phenomenon had been occasionally discussed in previous medical literature, it was their book The Three Faces of Eve (1957) that caused an epidemic of "MPD" to emerge. The epidemic is of interest as a moment in the destigmatization of psychiatric illness, representing the first time that a psychiatric diagnosis has ever been widely coveted. "Multiple personality disorder" entered DSM-III in 1980, remained in DSM-III-R in 1987, then was replaced by "dissociative identity disorder"—together with the comment that "the syndrome has been overdiagnosed in individuals who are highly suggestible"— in DSM-IV (1994).
Edward Shorter.
2014.
Look at other dictionaries:
multiple personality disorder — n. a dissociative mental disorder characterized by the existence in a person of two or more distinct, independent personalities, any of which may control behavior while being unaware of the other personalities and their memories and experiences:… … Universalium
multiple-personality disorder — ˌmultiple persoˈnality disorder 7 [multiple personality disorder] (also less frequent ˌsplit persoˈnality disorder) noun (psychology) … Useful english dictionary
multiple personality disorder — n. a dissociative mental disorder characterized by the existence in a person of two or more distinct, independent personalities, any of which may control behavior while being unaware of the other personalities and their memories and experiences:… … English World dictionary
multiple personality disorder — n a dissociative disorder that is characterized by the presence of two or more distinct and complex identities or personality states each of which becomes dominant and controls behavior from time to time to the exclusion of the others abbr. MPD… … Medical dictionary
multiple personality disorder — a supposed psychiatric disorder (the vast majority of psychiatrists deny its existence) in which the affected person has two or more distinct, and often contrasting, personalities. As each personality assumes dominance, it determines attitudes… … The new mediacal dictionary
multiple personality disorder — noun Date: 1901 a hysterical neurosis in which the personality becomes dissociated into two or more distinct but complex and socially and behaviorally integrated parts each of which becomes dominant and controls behavior from time to time to the… … New Collegiate Dictionary
multiple personality disorder — a psychiatric disorder in which the affected person has two or more distinct, and often contrasting, personalities. As each personality assumes dominance, it determines attitudes and behaviour and usually appears to be unaware of the other… … Medical dictionary
multiple personality disorder — noun A dissociative identity disorder … Wiktionary
multiple-personality disorder — noun Psychology a rare dissociative disorder in which two or more personalities with distinct memories and behaviour patterns apparently exist in one individual … English new terms dictionary
multiple personality disorder — noun → dissociative identity disorder …
