You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
The observations and case material in this paper came from my clinical work with several individuals who had the diagnosis of multiple personality disorder (MPD) or dissociative identity disorder (DID). I had the opportunity to interview and help five diagnosed DID patients admitted to the short-term inpatient unit where I formerly worked. In addition, the case material is from thousands of hours of outpatient intensive psychoanalytic psychotherapy with several patients who had this diagnosis.
Mythology, folktale, and literature has described the phenomenon of the double. Greek and Roman mythology have the stories of Zeus shape-shifting from god to a swan or bull, depending on whether he needed to be charming and beautiful or powerful and frightening in his conquest of a beautiful woman. In Europe during the Middle Ages, the belief in shape-shifters was wide spread and prevalent. Shape-shifters were purported to be individuals who could assume the physical form of any animal, bird, or even insect of choice. What has survived of this belief today are the werewolf and children's fairytales, such as Beauty and the Beast.
Hawthorn (1983) studied an international body of literature, comparing the portrayal of the double in novels with the psychiatric symptoms of MPD. Interestingly, he used examples of individual and societal splits in describing what is and is not multiplicity. The United States during the Civil War was split, but was not a double, primarily because of the conscious nature