The Psychology Book

IN CONTEXT

APPROACH

Mental disorders

BEFORE

1880s Pierre Janet describes MPD as multiple states of consciousness and coins the term “dissociation.”

1887 French surgeon Eugene Azam documents the multiple personalities of Felida X.

1906 US physician Mortin Prince reports Christine Beauchamp’s case in The Dissociation of Personality.

AFTER

1970s US psychiatrist Cornelia Wilbur reports Sybil Isabel Dorsett’s case and links MPD definitively with child abuse.

1980 The American Psychiatric Association publishes the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder, legitimating MPD.

1994 MPD is renamed Dissociative Identity Disorder.

Multiple ...