User talk:CloudSurfer/Sandbox

History

An intense interest in spiritualism, parapsychology and hypnosis continued throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, running in parallel with Locke's views that there was an association of ideas requiring the coexistence of feelings with consciousness. Hypnosis, which was pioneered in the late 1700s by Mesmer and de Puységur, challenged Locke's association of ideas. Hypnotists observed second personalities emerging during hypnosis and wondered how two minds could coexist. Early cases of what would now be diagnosed as DID appeared at this time and were treated by hypnosis. The 19th century saw a number of increasingly sophisticatedly reported cases of multiple personalities which Rieber estimated would be close to one hundred. Epilepsy was seen as a factor in some cases and discussion of this connection continues into the present era.

By the late 1800s there was a general realization that emotionally traumatic experiences could cause long-term disorders which may manifest with a variety of symptoms. It was in this climate that Charcot introduced his ideas of the impact of nervous shocks as a cause for a variety of neurological conditions. Janet as one of Charcot's students took these ideas and went on to developed his own theories of dissociation.

In the early 1900s interest in dissociation and MDP waned for a number of reasons. After Charcot's death in 1893 many of his "hysterical" patients were exposed as frauds and Janet's association with Charcot tarnished his theories of dissociation. Freud, recanted his earlier emphasis on dissociation and childhood trauma. Freud, a man who actively promoted his ideas and enlisted the help of others, won out over the "lone wolf" Janet who did not train students in a teaching hospital. Psychologists found that science was hard to reconcile with a "soul" or an "unconscious". In 1910 Bleuler introduced the term "schizophrenia" to replace "dementia praecox" and a review of the Index Medicus from 1903 through 1978 showed a dramatic decline in the number of reports of multiple personality after the diagnosis of schizophrenia "caught on," especially in the United States.

The public however were exposed to psychological ideas which took their interest. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and many short tales by Edgar Allan Poe, had a formidable impact but it was not until the 1957 publication of the book The Three Faces of Eve, and the popular movie which followed it, that the American public's interest in multiple personality was revived. In 1974 the highly influential book Sybil was published and six years later the diagnosis of Multiple Personality Disorder was included in the DSM. As media coverage spiked, diagnoses climbed. There were 200 reported cases of MPD from 1880 to 1979, and 20,000 from 1980 to 1990. Acocella reports that 40,000 cases were diagnosed from 1985 to 1995. The majority of diagnoses are made in North America, particularly the United States, and in English-speaking countries more generally with reports recently emerging from other countries.