Harvard Psychology textbook shows lack of knowledge about multiple personality in regard to a woman who saw another person in the mirror

Harvard Psychology Textbook

“The Self: Personality in the Mirror

Imagine that you wake up tomorrow morning, drag yourself into the bathroom, look into the mirror, and don’t recognize the face looking back at you…The woman, married for 30 years and the mother of two grown children, one day began to respond to her mirror image as if it were a different person. She talked to and challenged the person in the mirror. When there was no response, she tried to attack it as if it were an intruder. Her husband, shaken by this bizarre behavior, brought her to the neurologist, who was gradually able to convince her that the image in the mirror was in fact herself” (1, p. 492).

When I read this, at first I thought it was a joke, and that for some reason the editors of this textbook were doing a parody of Edgar Allan Poe’s “William Wilson.” But no, they had evidently not read either Poe or the literature on multiple personality.

Multiple Personality Textbook

“MPD [multiple personality disorder] patients often report seeing themselves as different people when they look into a mirror. They may see themselves as having hair, eyes, or skin of a different color, or as being of the opposite sex. In some instances, these alterations of perception of self are so disturbing that the individuals may phobically avoid mirrors. They may describe seeing themselves sequentially change into several different people while looking into a mirror” (2, p. 62).

Added 7/22/20: However, since the woman was relatively old when this apparently happened for the first time (multiple personality begins in childhood), I suppose it was more likely a neurological problem in her case, but multiple personality should still be considered if brain scans proved normal.

Comment

I had recently looked for a psychology textbook associated with a reputable college. I wanted to see the level of knowledge about multiple personality. The single page in this textbook that is devoted to dissociative identity disorder (multiple personality) (1, p. 572) cherry picks skeptical opinions, and does not indicate that the person who wrote that page had had any clinical experience with multiple personality.

I was happily surprised to find the above paragraph on “personality in the mirror” in another chapter of the textbook, a chapter supposedly having nothing to do with multiple personality. It is perfect, since I have discussed mirrors in regard to multiple personality so often in this blog.

Now, if there is anything that this general psychology textbook is less interested in than multiple personality, it is the psychology of creativity. Indeed, the authors’ attitude toward this aspect of psychology is epitomized on the page opposite the title page, where they make a comment about the art on the textbook’s cover: “Well, it’s art, so we really don’t have to explain it.”

The art depicts two human figures who are puzzlingly interconnected. It is the theme of the double, an artistic metaphor for multiple personality.

1. Daniel L. Schacter, Daniel T. Gilbert, Daniel M. Wegner. Psychology, Second Edition. New York, Worth Publishers, 2011.

2. Frank W. Putnam. Diagnosis and Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder. New York, The Guilford Press, 1989.