Beware of the Other Side(s) : Multiple Personality Disorder and Dissociative Identity Disorder in American Fiction

This interdisciplinary study examines the still vivid phenomenon of the most controversial psychiatric diagnosis in the United States: multiple personality disorder, now called dissociative identity disorder. This syndrome comprehends the occurrence of two or more distinct identities that take control of a person's behavior paired with an inexplicable memory loss. Synthesizing the fields of psychiatry and the dynamics of the disorder with its influential representation in American fiction, the study researches how psychiatry and fiction mutually shaped a mysterious syndrome and how this reciprocal process created a genre fiction of its own that persists until today in a very distinct self-referential mode. Contents Acknowledgments Preface Introduction PART I: HISTORY AND THEORY 1 Personalities or Personality States? The Definition of MPD/DID in Medical Terms 2 The Split of Personality: The Diagnosis MPD/DID versus Schizophrenia 3 Of Demons and Dissociation: The Origins and Early Science of the Other Side 3.1 Demon and Possession 3.2 Magnetism and Mesmerism 3.3 Dipsychism and Polypsychism 3.4 Hypnosis and Hysteria 3.5 Pierre Janet: The Concept of Dissociation 3.6 William James: “Mutations of the Self” 3.7 Morton Prince: The Co-consciousness 4 Shock and Trauma: Renaissance of the Dissociation Concept 4.1 Memory and Identity: The Illusion of the Unitary Self 4.2 Trauma 4.3 Contemporary Theories of Dissociation 5 The Other Side(s): Famous Cases of Double Consciousness and Multiple Personality 5.1 The “umgetauschte Persönlichkeit”: Gmelin’s Case (1791) 5.2 Mary Porter and Estelle (1836) 5.3 The Old State and the New State: The Case of Mary Reynolds (1816) 5.4 The Two Identities of A.B.: The Case of Ansel Bourne (1890) 5.5 A Case of Personality Clusters: Miss Beauchamp (1906) 5.6 The Three Selves of Eve: Thigpen and Cleckley (1957) 5.7 Fact or Fiction? The Sixteen Persons of “Sybil” (1973) 6 Voices of Doubt: The Validity of Multiple Personality PART II: THE CULTURE-EMBEDDED SYNDROME – MULTIPLE PERSONALITY AND DISSOCIATION IN AMERICAN FICTION 7 Brand Identity and “Culture-embedded Syndrome”: Multiple Personality in American Culture 8 Creating a Public Consciousness: The Role of the Mass Media 9 Fractured Minds: Personal Narratives of Multiple Personality 9.1 Truddi Chase: When Rabbit Howls (1987) 9.2 Joan Frances Casey: The Flock (1991) 9.3 Cameron West: First Person Plural (1999) 9.4 Robert B. Oxnam: A Fractured Mind (2005) 10 “Man’s Dual Nature” – Classical Literary Texts of Dissociation: Wakefield, William Wilson, Dr. Jekyll, and the Other Side 10.1 Doppelgänger, Double, and Alter Ego 10.2 Nathaniel Hawthorne: “Wakefield” (1835) 10.3 Edgar Allan Poe: “William Wilson” (1840) 10.4 Robert Louis Stevenson: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) 11 Beyond Control: Multiple Personality in the American Novel of the 1950s 11.1 Shirley Jackson: The Bird’s Nest (1954) 11.2 Margaret Millar: Beast in View (1955) 11.3 Robert Bloch: Psycho (1959) 11.4 Richard Condon: The Manchurian Candidate (1959) 12 Further Divisions: Subgenres of Multiple Personality and Dissociation Fiction since the 1970s 12.1 The “Devil Inside” – Dissociation as Demonic Possession 12.2 The “Spy Inside”: Dissociation in Spy Thrillers 12.3 The “Killer Inside”: Dissociation as Serial Killer Story 12.4 The “Protector Inside”: Dissociation as Coping Mechanism 13 “What is your name?”: Dissociation and Psychogenic Fugues in American Film from the 1950s to the Present PART III: CONTEMPORARY VARIATIONS IN SELECTED NOVELS 14 “This is what Mary would have said...”: Margaret Atwood Alias Grace (1996) 15 “I know this because Tyler Durden knows this...”: Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club (1996) 16 “ – textbook MPD”: Matt Ruff Set this House in Order (2003) 17 “Three! Three personalities in one...”: Ted Dekker’s Thr3e (2003) 18 “Recall what had been lost...”: Gabrielle Pina Chasing Sophea (2006) 19 “It’s almost like there are two of me...”: Jess Walter The Zero (2007) 20 “It’s all staged...”: Siri Hustvedt Sorrows of an American (2008) 21 Voices of Imagination: Valid Cases of Fiction Fugues and Storytelling Selves Conclusion Works Cited Primary Literature Secondary Literature Filmography Since the introduction of photography by commercial studio photographers and the colonial state in Kenya, this global medium has been intensely debated and contested among Muslims on the cosmopolitan East African coast. This book does not only explore the making, circulation, and consumption of popular photographs, but also the other side, their rejection and obliteration, an essential aspect of a medium's history that should not be neglected. It deals with various social spaces of refusal in the local Muslim milieu and in that of traditiona spirit mediums in which (gendered) visibility was (and is) contested in various and creative ways. It focuses on the aesthetics of withdrawal: the various ways and techniques that process the photographic act as well as the photographic image to theatricalize the surface of the image in new ways by veiling, masking, and concealing. In a fragmented historical perspective, Heike Behrend seeks to complement, decenter, and counter the history of photography as it has been told by the West and to narrate another history beginning with preceding local media such as textiles and spirit possession.-- Provided by publisher Since the introduction of photography by commercial studio photographers and the colonial state in Kenya, this global medium has been intensely debated and contested among Muslims on the cosmopolitan East African coast. This book does not only explore the making, circulation, and consumption of popular photographs, but also the other side, their rejection and obliteration, an essential aspect of a medium's history that should not be neglected. It deals with various »social spaces of refusal« in the local Muslim milieu and in that of »traditional« spirit mediums in which (gendered) visibility was (and is) contested in various and creative ways. It focuses on the »aesthetics of withdrawal«: the various ways and techniques that process the photographic act as well as the photographic image to theatricalize the surface of the image in new ways by veiling, masking, and concealing. In a fragmented historical perspective, Heike Behrend seeks to complement, decenter, and counter the history of photography as it has been told by the West and to narrate another history beginning with preceding local media such as textiles and spirit possession. This interdisciplinary study examines the still vivid phenomenon of the most controversial psychiatric diagnosis in the United States: multiple personality disorder, now called dissociative identity disorder. This syndrome comprehends the occurrence of two or more distinct identities that take control of a person's behavior paired with an inexplicable memory loss. Synthesizing the fields of psychiatry and the dynamics of the disorder with its influential representation in American fiction, the study researches how psychiatry and fiction mutually shaped a mysterious syndrome and how this reciprocal process created a genre fiction of its own that persists until today in a very distinct self-referential mode. Multiple Personality,Dissociative Identity,American Fiction,Literature,Psychoanalysis,America,American Studies,British Studies,Cultural Studies,Literary Studies Biographical note: Heike Schwarz (Dr. phil.) teaches American studies at the University of Augsburg, Germany. Her research fields include psychiatry and literature, representation of mental illness in literature, (pop)cultural studies, ecopsychology and ecocriticism