Do Literary Critics, Book Reviews, Creative Writing Programs, Departments of English & Comparative Literature know that Psychoanalytic Literary Theory became obsolete in 1980?

Prior to 1980, DSM-1 and DSM-2—the first and second editions of the diagnostic manual of the American Psychiatric Association—employed psychoanalytic terminology such as “neurosis,” which reflected the fact that the Freudian model of the mind was accepted in those days. In contrast, there has been no psychoanalytic terminology used in DSM-3 (1980), DSM-4 (1994), and DSM-5 (2013), which reflects the fact that the Freudian model became obsolete in 1980. 

In the pre-1980 Freudian era, multiple personality did not appear in the DSM under that name: it was classified as a subtype of “Hysterical neurosis.” But in 1980, with the publication of DSM-3, psychoanalytic terminology was eliminated, and there was no longer any “Hysterical neurosis.” Instead, there was now a category called “Dissociative Disorders,” which included multiple personality disorder (renamed “dissociative identity disorder” in DSM-4).

So as of 1980, the Freudian era was over, and the psychoanalytic model of the mind became obsolete. Of all the disorders in the DSM, this paradigm shift had the greatest implications for multiple personality, because multiple personality and psychoanalytic theory are antithetical:

“Dissociative multiplicity is a persona non grata in the psychoanalytic mainstream…Dissociation is present in the very early Freud, but then he abandoned it soon after. It came to be dismissed as prepsychoanalytic, and was relegated to the status of a historical curiosity or mistake. Freud went on to elaborate his entire oeuvre, followed by Klein and the postkleinians, Bowlby and attachment theory, the various Lacanian schools, Kohut and self psychology, and the interpersonal school. Psychoanalysis has managed to do all this while leaving dissociation out of the picture…the reincorporation of dissociation within psychoanalysis is a major challenge” (1).

The basic reason that psychoanalytic theory and multiple personality are antithetical is that the former assumes that every person has a single consciousness, while the latter assumes that some people have multiple consciousness. In his final years, Freud started to speak of “splitting of the ego,” but it was too little, too late.

All this means that current textbooks of literary theory are living in a pre-1980 time warp. They include psychoanalytic literary theory at some length, but almost nothing about dissociation and multiple personality. So I would recommend that they update with Multiple Identity Literary Theory, the subject of this blog.

1. Dell PF, O’Neil JA (Editors). Dissociation and the Dissociative Disorders: DSM-V and Beyond. Routledge, 2009, 864 pages.