Creating Hysteria: Women and Multiple Personality Disorder [Paperback]

Joan Acocella (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 27, 1999

From 1985 to 1995 an estimated 40,000 Americans, most of them women, were told they suffered from multiple personality disorder. Feminists, fundamentalists, and a substantial portion of the mental health community Andorsed this "Sybil-ing" of America. Sensation-seeking television talk shows took up the MPD rallying cry. In Creating Hysteria, Joan Acocella tells a riveting tale of therapists betraying their patients, of a psychotherapy profession at war within its own ranks, and finally of expatients rising up and putting an And to the MPD scandal.



"Creating Hysteria exposes one of the most frightening mental rollercoaster rides taken by thousands of people in modern times. Joan Acocella brilliantly illuminates how the mental health profession spearheaded, perhaps inadvertently, a fin-de-siecle hysteria, the fallout from which will take us into the next millennium. Anyone who has ever been interested in mental health should read this book."--Elizabeth Loftus, president, American Psychological Society

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Reading this acerbic and witty debunking of the Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) diagnosis is like staying long enough in a courtroom to listen to a brilliant prosecuting attorney and then walking out before the defense. Acocella, the coauthor of a psychology textbook, Abnormal Psychology, builds a highly convincing case against mental health professionals whom she portrays as exploiters who prompted the mass hysteria and witch-hunts that have resulted from recovered memory syndrome and the MPD diagnosis. (This book requires a mastery of numerous acronyms.) However, she proceeds to undercut her own argument by destroying all in her path: the child-protection movement, the credibility of women who say they were abused as children, the self-help (AA) movement, the feminist movement, insight-based psychotherapy, "New-Age spirituality" and postmodern theory are just a few of the victims of her sweep. Like all good prosecutors, Acocella has no qualms about using one set of beliefs, events or institutions as evidence and then discrediting the same set when the next stage of her argument requires it. She presents the media, for example, as having disregarded the truth in its pursuit of ratings when it embraced MPD and its offshoots, but the same media evolves into a champion of justice in her appraisal of its support of the False Memory Syndrome (FMS) Foundation. "Managed care" is villainous when it supports FMS but heroic when it balks at financing long-term treatment of MPD or indeed any prolonged therapy. One of the many ideologies she savages (while alternately using it to prove her points) is social constructivism. In fact, a broader sense of truth as a shifting and culturally located construct would have made her argument far more convincing. Agent, Robert Comfield. (Sept.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Based on the premise that mental disorders go in and out of vogue, this book traces the development of the Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD)/Recovered Memory movement from its beginnings (as the story of Sybil) to its heyday (in the 1980s). New Yorker writer Acocella (Abnormal Psychology) uses case studies, research, and original analysis to show that the movement is itself a form of social hysteria. Although it serves the needs of troubled women and the "therapy establishment," concern about this disorder deflects attention from what Acocella considers to be more serious social ills. This book, which reads like a well-written, expanded journal article, competently covers recent psychological history, including the Satanic cult scares of the 1970s. However, while criticizing the science of MPD, Acocella posits thinly substantiated claims against feminism, intellectuals, and the psychiatric establishment for encouraging the diagnosis. Recommended for comprehensive women's studies and psychology collections.AAntoinette Brinkman, Southwest Indiana Mental Health Ctr. Lib., Evansville
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Jossey-Bass; 1 edition (August 27, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0787947946
• ISBN-13: 978-0787947941
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.5 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #302,257 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Skeptic's View, August 9, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Creating Hysteria: Women and Multiple Personality Disorder (Paperback)

Having been misdiagnosed with DID by three so-called experts, then experiencing the full internet DID subculture of support sites with 'littles', outbursts, and amateur experts self-diagnoising both themselves and other people, I was interested to read this book. I always found it interesting how people evolve at support sites on the web so they can fit into the typical DID mold. Once again with 'littles' who can read like an adult but make such an effort to spell badly it goes beyond how a young child would spell. Then the 'protector' who dishes out insults and attacks with ferocity whenever it suits and never is expected to take responsibility for their actions. Always a 'counselor' type who seems to oversee and understand the rest and is kind enough to offer explanations to rest of the ignorant world. The 'system' mapping is what I sometimes find unbelievable. It's like reading a playbill for a cast list of characters. Actually I do think that DID is a legitimate diagnosis, but not as widespread as some would have it be believed. I believe that it's become an epidemic, particularly on the internet. Having been suckered into the whole thing, I read this book with great interest but I was somewhat disappointed with it. I feel that in some ways the author's arguments are weak and almost as fantastical as the proponents of DID. She also does contradict herself in some places. I wish she took a more scientific, logical approach to writing the book and eased up on the heavy emotional perspective, but that's how I like to view things and life in general so I know I'm biased. I truly hope someone else writes a book on the subject, because I think there's a wealth of information out there that hasn't been fully explored or published. Still, the book is worth reading even if it falls short of being excellent. What else is out there after all? Many books supporting it but not much from the other side at all. Too bad. I hope that changes for those of us who've gotten labeled as such by the mental health community and would like some support for not embracing the dx whole-heartedly.

42 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Most reviewers seem to have missed her last chapter, January 17, 2000

By 

Melanchthon "melanchthon" (USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Creating Hysteria: Women and Multiple Personality Disorder (Paperback)

I think that all of the reviews (both pro and anti) missed her last chapter (I think some people probably reviewed the book without reading all of it, which is understandable, because the first chapters are provocatively written). Her point in the first part is that insofar as recovered memory syndrome, ritual satanic abuse, and multiple personality disorder are taken seriously, they apparently do little to help people recover from their unhappy states, and insofar as the claims of people suffering from these disorders are provably false in an objective sense, they discredit the professionals who diagnose them and the individuals who are diagnosed with them. Her more important point ( in my opinion) in the second part is that insofar as these phenomena have been discredited in the wider public, they lead to a distraction from or discrediting of related issues (sexual and other kinds of abuse of children and women, and more importantly, the circumstances of poor people, who are more likely to suffer certain sorts of abuse). Most likely no one will be able to settle many of the disputes over the accuracy of repressed childhood memories, but she points to an important problem--these particular trends in psychotherapy distract us from important social problems and yet offer no solution to them.

On a related theme: I visited a therapist in 1996 to be treated for depression--a therapist that my mother found for me--who insisted that I must have repressed memories and that this could be the only source of my longterm, episodal depression (she ignored my culture shock from a transcontinental move, my below-poverty-line income, the end of a serious long term relationship, my unfinished dissertation, and a troubled relationship with an alcoholic parent). When I pointed out to her that I have almost continuous memories of my life after the age of 5 (my friends are continually astounded that I can tell them what we ate at a restaurant meal in college) and that I felt it unlikely that I had repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse, she told me that I was in denial and that until I recognized the importance of recovering these memories, I would continue to suffer from episodic depression. When I repeated that I wanted therapy for my current problems, she accused me of being resistant to therapy and promptly volunteered to schedule me for three sessions a week to get me over this problem. I thanked her for her time and told her that I would no longer be requiring her services; when she immediately presented me with a bill (which she assumed my parents would pay) for $200 for her services, I pointed out to her that my father was unemployed at the time and I would have to pay the bill myself. Since she already knew about my income problems, this actively reduced her interest in treating me!

My point is this: if you go to a therapist with an open mind to asking for help in resolving problems and he or she tells you something that seems ridiculous, it probably is: therapists, despite their training and potential gift for insight, have no special intellectual powers--merely more degrees.

17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars How many of the reviewers actually read the book?, August 5, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Creating Hysteria: Women and Multiple Personality Disorder (Paperback)

Contrary to what Ms. Feruggia believes, Acocella *does* discuss how some disorders are culturally-oriented. See Chapt. 2 for example.

I found this book to be compelling reading, and unlike some of the other reviewers, I felt she made a pretty strong case for her criticism of the psychiatric establishment's role in creating the whole MPD "epidemic."