Dr. Benjamin Rush, Founding Father, Continental Army Surgeon-General, and Father of American Psychiatry, reported cases of multiple personality

From a review of two biographies in today’s Wall Street Journal:

“During the spring of 1813, former presidents John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were united in grief at the death of a mutual friend who had recently persuaded them to forget their bitter rivalries. Like the two celebrated statesmen, the eminent physician and social reformer Benjamin Rush had been a Founding Father, one of 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

“But Adams and Jefferson believed that Rush deserved to be remembered for much more than his conspicuous enthusiasm for the cause of American liberty. Jefferson wrote that “a better man, than Rush, could not have left us,” extolling his benevolence, learning, genius and honesty. Adams replied with equal praise: He knew of no one, “living or dead,” who had “done more real good in America…

“Rush was the first American physician to argue the baleful influence of strong alcohol and tobacco, an unorthodox view that riled consumers and producers alike. Even more controversial was his attack upon slavery, an institution entrenched in many of Britain’s American colonies…

“Rush was the first American physician to treat mental illness humanely as a disease rather than as criminal behavior or the devil’s work. His “Medical Inquiries and Observations Upon the Diseases of the Mind” was a groundbreaking study, anticipating psychotherapy and occupational therapy. It belatedly earned him the title “Father of American Psychiatry…” (1).

Not mentioned in the above review of two biographies, Dr. Rush “…collected case histories of dissociation and multiple personality…” and “…theorized that the mechanism responsible for the doubling of consciousness lay in a disconnection between the two hemispheres of the brain…” (2, p. 28) (a theory that has since been discredited, but was cutting-edge in his day).

That Dr. Benjamin Rush, more than two hundred years ago, among his social, surgical, medical, and psychological interests, collected cases of multiple personality, is more evidence that multiple personality is one of the oldest, recognized, psychological phenomena.

1. Stephen Brumwell, “Dr. Benjamin Rush, American Hippocrates,” Wall Street Journal, September 20, 2018. https://www.wsj.com/articles/rush-and-dr-benjamin-rush-review-american-hippocrates-1537493843

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