Case history of Jeanne Fery, sixteenth-century French nun with multiple personality: Her need to write her story

“This discussion reinterprets a sixteenth-century case of possession and exorcism as Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD). This is perhaps the earliest historical case in which DID can be diagnosed retrospectively with confidence. Jeanne Fery, a 25-year-old Dominican Nun, wrote her own account of her exorcism which took place in Mons, France in 1584 and 1585. Her exorcists produced an even more detailed account describing both identity fragmentation and a past history of childhood trauma. Also well described in both accounts are major criteria and associated features of DID as described in present day diagnostic manuals…The 109-page description of her treatment course was republished in French in the nineteenth century by Bourneville (1886), a colleague of [Pierre] Janet, who also diagnosed Jeanne's disorder as "doubling of the personality," (the term then in use for DID). This article is the first English-language presentation of these documents…

“…at the end of her 21 months of treatment, Jeanne Fery, on her own initiative, wrote her autobiography…Jeanne’s urge to write may have been to facilitate recovery from trauma by restoring continuity to her life history…Modern therapists also rediscover writing as an important means to this end…Writing was necessary even while Jeanne was ill…to allow communication among the fragmented ego states and bridging of her dissociative amnesia. Jeanne and her exorcists were wise to tame this strategy and adapt it to the ends of integration. The way in which Jeanne told her story was dependent in part on her perception of the audience…Jeanne’s insistence on publication and public proclamation of her ‘story’ involved also an element of family disclosure and confrontation; her great aunt as mistress of the convent was part of the audience, so Jeanne was breaking the family rule of silence in a direct way every time she told her story” (1).

NOTE: To see the whole 12-page case history, click the link below.

1. Onno van der Hart, Ruth Lierens, Jean Goodwin. “Jeanne Fery: A Sixteen[th] Century Case of Dissociative Identity Disorder.” The Journal of Psychohistory 24(1) Summer 1996. http://www.onnovdhart.nl/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/jeanne_fery.pdf

Comments (added the same day): Other psychiatric diagnoses like schizophrenia are relatively new. Cases that would satisfy today’s diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia were not reported in the medical or psychiatric literature until the nineteenth century (Wikipedia, “History of schizophrenia”).

Moreover, the official DSM-5 criteria for making the diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder (multiple personality disorder) are much shorter and simpler than the diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia, because multiple personality is a more clearly defined, specific condition.

Of course, the main point of this post is that the essential features of multiple personality have been consistent for more than four hundred years. And this includes a need by people with multiple personality to write their stories.