Multiple Personality, Dissociation, and C. G. Jung's Complex Theory

In the past decade North American clinicians have reported an unprecedented number of new cases of multiple personality. Formerly classified by psychiatrists as ‘hysterical neurosis, dissociative type’, since 1980 the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders has classified it in a new category, ‘dissociative disorders’, which multiple personality shares with such clinical entities as psychogenic amnesia, fugue states, depersonalisation syndrome, and atypical dissociative disorder (AMERICAN PSYCHIATRIC ASSOCIATION 2). Whereas until the mid-1970s the number of diagnosed cases of multiple personality totalled fewer than 200, the current estimate is that cases now run into thousands (KLUFT 33). An international society to study multiple personality and the dissociative disorders has been formed in Chicago, and its more than 1,000 members attend annual conferences devoted to sharing clinical insights and research reports on the dissociative disorders. Important clinical research on the phenomenology and psychophysiology of multiple personality disorder has been under way at the National Institute of Mental Health in Washington, D. C., and a new refereed psychiatric journal, Dissociation, has been created to meet the demand for further information on the dissociative disorders. However, despite the explosion of renascent interest in multiple personalities, the theoretical understanding of its phenomenology has largely been inadequate. The professional psychiatric and psychological communities in North America still tend to overlook the work of C. G. Jung when seeking answers to new problems that arise in clinical practice. This paper offers a correction to this imbalance.

Jung is a heretofore unrecognised pioneer in the study of dissociation. Jung's ‘complex theory’ is one of the earliest and remains the most comprehensive theoretical framework for understanding the phenomenology of multiple personality. By creatively deviating from