Multiple Personality ignored regarding worldwide belief in ghosts, and when Harvard psychologists reference Harvard’s greatest psychologist, William James.

Belief in ghosts is common around the world: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/09/why-do-people-believe-in-ghosts/379072/.

In other words, it is relatively common for people to sense the presence of a personified being other than their own regular self. But the obvious connection between ghosts and multiple personality is usually ignored.

Why connect ghosts—or any other type of sensed, personified presence—with multiple personality? Because whenever you have an unexplained psychological phenomenon, it is reasonable to ask if there is a known psychological condition that has that type of experience. And the known psychological condition in which people sense the presence of other personified beings is multiple personality.

The failure to think of multiple personality when it is obviously relevant reminds me of the way a Harvard psychology textbook failed to mention multiple personality when referencing the most revered psychologist in the history of Harvard, William James, as discussed the following past post:

June 10, 2015

Harvard’s Psychology textbook reveres William James, but hides and omits James’s validation of dissociative fugue and multiple personality

The recent Harvard psychology textbook cites William James (1842-1910) on twenty-six different pages, spread throughout the text, beginning on page one. He is evidently the Harvard psychologist of whom Harvard is most proud. “His landmark book—The Principles of Psychology—is still widely read and remains one of the most influential books ever written on the subject” (1, p. 2).

However, there are two pages in the recent Harvard textbook on which James is not mentioned: page 572, devoted to dissociative identity disorder (multiple personality) and page 573, devoted to dissociative amnesia and dissociative fugue. This is strange, since two whole pages of James’s The Principles of Psychology are devoted to James’s study and treatment of Ansel Bourne (2, p. 391-392).

“Ansel Bourne was a famous 19th-century psychology case due to his experience of a probable dissociative fugue. The case, among the first ever documented, remains of interest as an example of multiple personality and amnesia. Among the doctors who treated Bourne was William James…” —Wikipedia

Indeed, James devotes twenty-seven pages of his “landmark book” to cases which involve alterations of the self, including fifteen pages on “alternating personality” (2, pp. 378-393).

William James concludes that “The same brain may subserve many conscious selves, either alternate or coexisting” (2, p. 401).

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

2. William James. The Principles of Psychology, Volume One [1890]. New York, Dover Publications, 1950.