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Creating Hysteria: Women and Multiple Personality Disorder
From 1985 to 1995 an estimated 40,000 Americans, most of themwomen, were told they suffered from multiple personality disorder.Feminists, fundamentalists, and a substantial portion of the mentalhealth community Andorsed this "Sybil-ing" of America.Sensation-seeking television talk shows took up the MPD rallyingcry. In Creating Hysteria, Joan Acocella tells a riveting tale oftherapists betraying their patients, of a psychotherapy professionat war within its own ranks, and finally of expatients rising upand putting an And to the MPD scandal.
"Creating Hysteria exposes one of the most frightening mentalrollercoaster 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
"Creating Hysteria exposes one of the most frightening mentalrollercoaster 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
- GenresPsychologyNonfiction
228 pages, Paperback
First published August 27, 1999
3 people are currently reading
231 people want to read
About the author
Joan Acocella
23 books23 followersJoan B. Acocella was an American journalist who served as a dance and book critic for The New Yorker.
Acocella received her B.A. in English in 1966 from the University of California, Berkeley. She earned a Ph.D. in comparative literature at Rutgers University in 1984 with a thesis on the Ballets Russes. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1993. Acocella was a 2012 Holtzbrinck Berlin Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin.
Acocella has served as the senior critic and reviews editor for Dance Magazine and New York dance critic for the Financial Times. Her writing also appears regularly in the New York Review of Books. She began writing for The New Yorker in 1992 and was appointed dance critic in 1998.
Her New Yorker article "Cather and the Academy", which appeared in the November 27, 1995 issue, received a Front Page Award from the Newswomen’s Club of New York and was included in the “Best American Essays” anthology of 1996. She expanded the essay into Willa Cather and the Politics of Criticism. (2004).
Acocella received her B.A. in English in 1966 from the University of California, Berkeley. She earned a Ph.D. in comparative literature at Rutgers University in 1984 with a thesis on the Ballets Russes. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1993. Acocella was a 2012 Holtzbrinck Berlin Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin.
Acocella has served as the senior critic and reviews editor for Dance Magazine and New York dance critic for the Financial Times. Her writing also appears regularly in the New York Review of Books. She began writing for The New Yorker in 1992 and was appointed dance critic in 1998.
Her New Yorker article "Cather and the Academy", which appeared in the November 27, 1995 issue, received a Front Page Award from the Newswomen’s Club of New York and was included in the “Best American Essays” anthology of 1996. She expanded the essay into Willa Cather and the Politics of Criticism. (2004).
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
June 10, 2020
Ok, so the False Memory Syndrome Foundation is gone, and the ISSTD is growing. 20 years has passed. Did the "MPD" movement die? No, it didn't. More professionals are learning about trauma and dissociation as a spectrum.
Half of this book is narrated as sarcasm. So sometimes it's hard to understand whether what they say is fact, a joke, a twisted fact or pun.
It's alarming that the conclusions are that therapists shouldn't even be neutral about memories, they should deny abuse memories, that it's better to "forget and get over it". What the hell?
There are things that are true of course. It's possible to have twisted memories, and many professionals are unethical, and it's possible to make false-positive dx (as in many disorders and illneses). However, this book, clearly a friend of Debbie Nathan, mocks women survivors. YES, survivors. The author doesn't like that term.
So what I don't get is, the book is called "creating hysteria", as in "hysteria doesn't exist as such", HOWEVER, makes assumptions that women are clearly exaggerating, seeking attention, are clingy, lying, and enjoy being the victim.
Ok so, the objective of this book is to drive women to what they were before Charcot. Not people who were epidemically abused and are in need of compassion and guidance, just exaggerating uterus who need to "get over it". After all "if everything is childhood abuse, nothing is childhood abuse".
And I repeat. The false memory syndrome foundation has closed after years of being inactive. And more and more studies on trauma and dissociation are done. Your "most important" anti MPD resource is gone. Case Closed
Half of this book is narrated as sarcasm. So sometimes it's hard to understand whether what they say is fact, a joke, a twisted fact or pun.
It's alarming that the conclusions are that therapists shouldn't even be neutral about memories, they should deny abuse memories, that it's better to "forget and get over it". What the hell?
There are things that are true of course. It's possible to have twisted memories, and many professionals are unethical, and it's possible to make false-positive dx (as in many disorders and illneses). However, this book, clearly a friend of Debbie Nathan, mocks women survivors. YES, survivors. The author doesn't like that term.
So what I don't get is, the book is called "creating hysteria", as in "hysteria doesn't exist as such", HOWEVER, makes assumptions that women are clearly exaggerating, seeking attention, are clingy, lying, and enjoy being the victim.
Ok so, the objective of this book is to drive women to what they were before Charcot. Not people who were epidemically abused and are in need of compassion and guidance, just exaggerating uterus who need to "get over it". After all "if everything is childhood abuse, nothing is childhood abuse".
And I repeat. The false memory syndrome foundation has closed after years of being inactive. And more and more studies on trauma and dissociation are done. Your "most important" anti MPD resource is gone. Case Closed
March 3, 2021
Phenomenal. Some dated bits, but overall an important look at an important historical moment.
March 26, 2015
Acocella describes the history and origins of the MPD overdiagnosis fad of the late 1980s and early 1990s. This was a serious matter, causing the breakup of families and the cultish glorification of certain "experts" who were subsequently defrocked.
Ultimately the scandals led to the psychiatric industry's backpedaling. They began to claim that it was all based on a delusion of clients who only believed, or had been talked into believing, they had more than one self. This was why MPD was subsequently renamed to DID.
It's an excellent book, makes excellent sense, is a powerful exposé of unethical practices in the mental health industry, and draws entirely the wrong conclusions. Acocella reassures us that no one really has multiple personalities, and that the whole thing is a crypto-misogynist myth. Of course, this is sheer nonsense, and modern psychiatry is slowly coming to terms with the fact that multiples do exist.
Even so, we recommend that everyone who is in therapy (multiple or not) read this book. Read it if you have ever had questions about the way your doctor tries to dredge up questionable traumatic memories -- or if you feel like you're being pressed to accept a certain view of yourself, the people in your multiple system (if any) and your childhood that doesn't fit your truth. Many therapists did, and some apparently still do, use the tactics described in this book.
Acocella's theory of multiplicity as nonexistent save as a "cultural idiom of distress" is completely wrong, but she is quite accurate about the manipulations of clients in the mental health industry. More on Astraea's Bad Psychiatry Page.
A. Temple
Ultimately the scandals led to the psychiatric industry's backpedaling. They began to claim that it was all based on a delusion of clients who only believed, or had been talked into believing, they had more than one self. This was why MPD was subsequently renamed to DID.
It's an excellent book, makes excellent sense, is a powerful exposé of unethical practices in the mental health industry, and draws entirely the wrong conclusions. Acocella reassures us that no one really has multiple personalities, and that the whole thing is a crypto-misogynist myth. Of course, this is sheer nonsense, and modern psychiatry is slowly coming to terms with the fact that multiples do exist.
Even so, we recommend that everyone who is in therapy (multiple or not) read this book. Read it if you have ever had questions about the way your doctor tries to dredge up questionable traumatic memories -- or if you feel like you're being pressed to accept a certain view of yourself, the people in your multiple system (if any) and your childhood that doesn't fit your truth. Many therapists did, and some apparently still do, use the tactics described in this book.
Acocella's theory of multiplicity as nonexistent save as a "cultural idiom of distress" is completely wrong, but she is quite accurate about the manipulations of clients in the mental health industry. More on Astraea's Bad Psychiatry Page.
A. Temple
February 20, 2021
Acocella is a clinically-ignorant, survivor-bashing literary critic with zero expertise in trauma who gleefully leaves readers with enormous misconceptions about the *factual existence* of both child rape and dissociative disorders. All clinical science since has amply proven Acocella—and her “psychologist” sources like Loftus—dead wrong on all the core questions raised in this book. Read it and be rankly misled by this eloquent essayist at your own peril.
November 25, 2014
From 1985 to 1995 an estimated 40,000 Americans, most of them women, were told they suffered from multiple personality disorder. And yet there is no evidence that this disorder even exists; or rather, that its existence is anything more than an iatrogenic consequence of terribly irresponsible, unscientific and fanatical psychotherapy.
In this book, Acocella skillfully contextualises this very recent (!) dark decade of hysteria, where impassioned psychiatrists used hypnotherapy, drugs (including sodium amytal) and psychological coersion in a sort of religious fervour to "uncover" alternate personalities and histories of violent sexual abuse (including satanic rituals) in a population of incredibly suggestable and vulnerable females. While the author does do some speculation about the social forces at play during this time period, she allows the evidence to speak for itself when it comes to the "disorder", its so-called treatment, and its validity as a psychological construct.
This decade (1985-1995) is one of many incredibly dark blots in the history of psychology. Families were destroyed, innocents imprisoned, children taken away from their mothers, and mothers traumatised through the very therapy that should have been there to help them. I am so pleased that a book like this has been written, to serve as a hard lesson for why evidence-based practise and the scientific method are so crucial in mental health, and should be at the core of any therapeutic intervention.
In this book, Acocella skillfully contextualises this very recent (!) dark decade of hysteria, where impassioned psychiatrists used hypnotherapy, drugs (including sodium amytal) and psychological coersion in a sort of religious fervour to "uncover" alternate personalities and histories of violent sexual abuse (including satanic rituals) in a population of incredibly suggestable and vulnerable females. While the author does do some speculation about the social forces at play during this time period, she allows the evidence to speak for itself when it comes to the "disorder", its so-called treatment, and its validity as a psychological construct.
This decade (1985-1995) is one of many incredibly dark blots in the history of psychology. Families were destroyed, innocents imprisoned, children taken away from their mothers, and mothers traumatised through the very therapy that should have been there to help them. I am so pleased that a book like this has been written, to serve as a hard lesson for why evidence-based practise and the scientific method are so crucial in mental health, and should be at the core of any therapeutic intervention.
September 1, 2024
A JOURNALIST SUMMARIZES THE ENDING OF THE MPD TREND
Joan B. Acocella (born 1945) is an American journalist who is the dance and book critic for The New Yorker; she has written/cowritten other books such as 'Abnormal Psychology: Current Perspectives,' 'Twenty-eight Artists and Two Saints: Essays, Willa Cather and the Politics of Criticism,' etc.
She stated in the first chapter of this 1999 book, "Prior to Sybil, MPD had been one of the rarest of mental disorders... a search of the medical literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries had yielded only seventy-six cases that met their definition. But after Sybil, MPD exploded. One expert estimates that between 1985 and 1995 there were almost 40,000 new cases. And curiously, the latter-day multiples looked a lot like Sybil... In one study of 236 cases, the mean number of alters was sixteen, Sybil's count exactly." (Pg. 4)
She notes, "As the number of MPD patients grew, so, naturally, did the field designated to treat them. Until about 1975, there had been no MPD specialty to speak of. Multiple personality disorder had no separate listing in [the DSM]... But in 1980, after strenuous lobbying by interested therapists, the new edition of DSM gave multiple personality disorder a primary-level listing among the dissociative disorders... MPD was now a full-fledged psychiatric syndrome... The field soon had its own journal... By 1990 the average annual output of publications on MPD had multiplied 6,000 percent over the pre-1970 level." (Pg. 6)
She observes, "The first premise of the RM movement is that childhood sexual abuse is very common, affecting about one-third of girls. (The definitions used to arrive at this statistic are so broad that it is a wonder that the RM advocates only got one-third. The Courage to Heal says that if, as a child, you were 'subjected to unnecessary medical treatments' or 'bathed in a way that felt intrusive to you' or 'fondled, kissed, or held in a way that made you feel uncomfortable,' that is sexual abuse, just like rape.)" (Pg. 38) She adds, "And if you have no recollection of being abused, that doesn't rule you out... Indeed, if you don't believe that you were abused, that may be a sign that you were abused." (Pg. 40)
After mentioning several malpractice suits that have been filed against therapists, she adds, "Those are only the civil suits. The criminal trials have now begun, insurance fraud being the primary issue... There have been many, many legal cases against therapists in the last five years, and overwhelmingly the therapists are losing. Clinicians across the country are watching the trend, but none more closely than their insurance companies...
"Now, a number of insurers have added a further disqualifying condition: if the therapist uses hypnosis to help patients recover memories of childhood abuse. If only for financial reasons, one of the most disgraceful episodes in the history of psychotherapy seems to be coming to an end." (Pg. 24-25)
She points out, "In view of rulings in many courts that 'recovered memories' lacked the scientific support to meet legal standards of evidence---and also the Supreme Court's 1995 ruling that ideas introduced by expert scientific witnesses had to be 'derived by the scientific method' and 'supported by the appropriate validation' (which recovered memory is not)---the trend seemed likely to continued. Week by week, recovered memory and multiple personality disorder were discredited." (Pg. 100)
This is an excellent, "journalistic" (but well-documented) account of this controversial movement, that will be of considerable interest to anyone studying this issue.
Joan B. Acocella (born 1945) is an American journalist who is the dance and book critic for The New Yorker; she has written/cowritten other books such as 'Abnormal Psychology: Current Perspectives,' 'Twenty-eight Artists and Two Saints: Essays, Willa Cather and the Politics of Criticism,' etc.
She stated in the first chapter of this 1999 book, "Prior to Sybil, MPD had been one of the rarest of mental disorders... a search of the medical literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries had yielded only seventy-six cases that met their definition. But after Sybil, MPD exploded. One expert estimates that between 1985 and 1995 there were almost 40,000 new cases. And curiously, the latter-day multiples looked a lot like Sybil... In one study of 236 cases, the mean number of alters was sixteen, Sybil's count exactly." (Pg. 4)
She notes, "As the number of MPD patients grew, so, naturally, did the field designated to treat them. Until about 1975, there had been no MPD specialty to speak of. Multiple personality disorder had no separate listing in [the DSM]... But in 1980, after strenuous lobbying by interested therapists, the new edition of DSM gave multiple personality disorder a primary-level listing among the dissociative disorders... MPD was now a full-fledged psychiatric syndrome... The field soon had its own journal... By 1990 the average annual output of publications on MPD had multiplied 6,000 percent over the pre-1970 level." (Pg. 6)
She observes, "The first premise of the RM movement is that childhood sexual abuse is very common, affecting about one-third of girls. (The definitions used to arrive at this statistic are so broad that it is a wonder that the RM advocates only got one-third. The Courage to Heal says that if, as a child, you were 'subjected to unnecessary medical treatments' or 'bathed in a way that felt intrusive to you' or 'fondled, kissed, or held in a way that made you feel uncomfortable,' that is sexual abuse, just like rape.)" (Pg. 38) She adds, "And if you have no recollection of being abused, that doesn't rule you out... Indeed, if you don't believe that you were abused, that may be a sign that you were abused." (Pg. 40)
After mentioning several malpractice suits that have been filed against therapists, she adds, "Those are only the civil suits. The criminal trials have now begun, insurance fraud being the primary issue... There have been many, many legal cases against therapists in the last five years, and overwhelmingly the therapists are losing. Clinicians across the country are watching the trend, but none more closely than their insurance companies...
"Now, a number of insurers have added a further disqualifying condition: if the therapist uses hypnosis to help patients recover memories of childhood abuse. If only for financial reasons, one of the most disgraceful episodes in the history of psychotherapy seems to be coming to an end." (Pg. 24-25)
She points out, "In view of rulings in many courts that 'recovered memories' lacked the scientific support to meet legal standards of evidence---and also the Supreme Court's 1995 ruling that ideas introduced by expert scientific witnesses had to be 'derived by the scientific method' and 'supported by the appropriate validation' (which recovered memory is not)---the trend seemed likely to continued. Week by week, recovered memory and multiple personality disorder were discredited." (Pg. 100)
This is an excellent, "journalistic" (but well-documented) account of this controversial movement, that will be of considerable interest to anyone studying this issue.
October 27, 2022
Fascinating.
March 9, 2009
This book taught me a lot about the relationship between false memory syndrome, multiple personality disorder, and Satanic ritual abuse. The most interesting thing I got from it was a little information about Paul Ingram, whose religious background made it possible for him to believe he was guilty of SRA and had forgotten it. I will have to read more about that case.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews