Multiple Personality: Seemingly Endless Controversy

Dr. Paul S. Appelbaum, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University and past president of the American Psychiatric Association says multiple personality affects about 1 percent of the population, though “many of those people may have quite mild cases and do not experience problems from it and never come to clinical attention” (1). [consistent with my findings regarding fiction writers]

Other people say multiple personality is a fad encouraged by “the 1973 blockbuster book Sybil, about a woman with 16 personalities” (1). 

However, back in 1973, I was in the middle of my psychiatric residency training, and I don’t recall any impact from the book Sybil. Indeed, the diagnosis of multiple personality was never made by me or anyone else. What I do recall is that the hot topic in psychiatry of the 1970s was bipolar disorder and the prescription of lithium.

So out of curiosity, I plan to reread Sybil and see if it encourages or discourages the diagnosis of multiple personality (a.k.a. “dissociative identity disorder”).

As for John Steinbeck, East of Eden, and the meaning of the Nobel Prize in Literature, I have, at least for now, lost interest.

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/20/us/politics/herschel-walker-mental-illness.html