Scientific Skeptics now say that Multiple Personality “exists,” that it is “genuine,” and that it is “typically not faked or intentionally produced”

Emotional skeptics like Allen Frances, M.D., call multiple personality “bunk” and a “hoax” (see recent post). But scientific skeptics now acknowledge that multiple personality exists and is genuine.

“There is little dispute that DID [dissociative identity disorder, also known as multiple personality disorder] ‘exists’…even…skeptical researchers believe that DID is ‘genuine’ in the sense that its signs and symptoms are typically not faked or intentionally produced…” (1, p. 122).

“The central question at stake therefore is not DID’s existence but rather its etiology…some researchers contend that DID is a spontaneously occurring consequence of childhood trauma, whereas others contend that it emerges primarily in response to suggestive therapist cuing, media influences, and broader sociocultural expectations” (1, p. 122).

Although these skeptics prefer the sociocognitive model to the trauma model, they have an open mind, because their sources of evidence for the sociocognitive model “do not imply, however, that DID can typically be created in vacuo by iatrogenic or sociocultural influences…Therefore, it seems plausible that iatrogenic and sociocultural influences often operate on a backdrop of preexisting psychopathology, life stressors, and genetic influences…[Moreover, their preference for the sociocognitive model] does not imply…that the [childhood trauma model] has been falsified or should be abandoned…Indeed, some important aspects of these two models may ultimately prove commensurable” (1, pp. 141-142).

In short, the only things that these skeptics are absolutely sure of is that multiple personality “exists,” that it is “genuine,” and that it is “typically not faked or intentionally produced.”

1. Scott O. Lilienfeld, Steven Jay Lynn, Jeffrey M. Lohr (Editors). Science and Pseudoscience in Clinical Psychology, Second Edition. New York, The Guilford Press, 2015.