case study on split personality disorder

Who was Sybil? The true story behind her multiple personalities

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The story of Sybil — a young woman who had been abused by her mother as a child and, as a result, had a mental breakdown and created multiple personalities — caused a sensation. Sybil was a bestselling book in the 1970s and was adapted as a 1976 television mini-series and a feature-length docudrama in 2007. Author Flora Schreiber and Sybil's psychiatrist, Dr. Cornelia Wilbur, became rich and famous as a result. Sybil also profited, but her true identity remained a secret until after all three women were dead.

Much of the sensational story was fabricated, according to journalist and author Debbie Nathan. She reveals the truth about the case in her  book, Sybil Exposed: The Extraordinary Story Behind the Famous Multiple Personality Case , which she discussed in on The Current .

In the original book, Sybil is portrayed as a young woman who started seeing a psychoanalyst in New York City in the early 1950s. Nathan described what happened after a few sessions, as detailed in the book: "She had a very dramatic moment when she started smashing windows, and split into another personality, into a little girl. And as she went into further therapy with the therapist, she developed many other personalities, a total of 16. The therapist assumed that something terrible must have happened to her when she was a child to create this kind of splitting in her consciousness. So she spent many years working with her. And ultimately Sybil remembered terrible, hideous sexual abuse and torture by her mother, and once she came to remember that, she reintegrated and was able to have a happy life after that. So the book had a happy ending."

Sybil's case generated widespread fascination both in the general public and the medical community, and a group of psychiatrists and psychologists successfully lobbied to have multiple personality disorder included in the DSM ( Diagnostic and Statistical Manual ). Once that happened, the disorder, which had been extremely rare, became a relatively common diagnosis. "In the entire history of Western civilization, there had been less than 200 [cases] over a period of centuries," Nathan said. "But after the book and film, suddenly there were hundreds and thousands. And by the late 1980s there were 40,000 cases diagnosed in the United States alone."

Sybil's real name was Shirley Mason, and she was brought up as a Seventh Day Adventist in rural Minnesota. The fundamentalist Christian sect taught that people shouldn't read fiction. But Shirley was a highly imaginative child, who loved to make up stories. "She lived in a fantasy world as a little girl," Nathan said. By the time Shirley was in college, she was having psychological problems, and she went to see Dr. Wilbur in the 1940s.

Dr. Wilbur had an interest in multiple personality disorder, and she recommended that Shirley read up on the subject; a mistake, in Nathan's view, as Shirley was so prone to fantasize. But it wasn't until a few years later, in the early 1950s, that Shirley returned to therapy and the multiple personalities emerged.

"One day Shirley just knocked on Dr. Wilbur's door and said, 'Hi, I'm Peggy,' a nine-year-old alter personality," Nathan explained. "Dr. Wilbur barely blinked an eye. She seemed very pleased that she now had a multiple personality disorder patient. She told Shirley she'd treat her for free, on credit, and she began giving her strong psychotropic drugs and barbiturates. Within a few weeks, [Dr. Wilbur] asked Shirley if she'd like to write a book with her about the case."

One of the drugs Dr. Wilbur administered was Thorazine, "an anti-psychotic that can have very, very strong side effects, including hallucinations," Nathan said. "And she gave her intravenous barbiturates, which can cause all kinds of fantasies which seem very real while the person's having them. They're like nightmares, but when you wake up from them, you believe that the material you fantasized really happened."

Nathan discovered the truth by poring over the papers of Flora Schreiber, the journalist who collaborated on the book. Her papers, which included thousands of pages of therapy material between Dr. Wilbur and Shirley Mason, had been sealed until 2001, because it wasn't until then that it was known whether Shirley was alive or dead.

Though Sybil ends happily, the woman who inspired the story did not. Shirley became a barbiturate addict, and was heavily dependent on Wilbur, who paid her rent, gave her clothes and money, and supplied her with drugs. Nathan likened the relationship to that of a junkie to her pusher.

Nathan speculates that Dr. Wilbur's motivations were based on the fact that she never had children. "From the 1930s to the 1950s, in psychiatry and the popular culture, you were not a fully realized woman unless you had children," Nathan explained. "And I think Dr. Wilbur wanted a daughter. And I think that was the real dynamic of the relationship."

In therapy, Shirley would imply that the personalities were generated because something terrible had happened to her. "The doctor would ask leading questions, which quickly came to focus on her mother," Nathan said. "Eventually there was a very detailed story of sexual torture by the mother, and that torture was supposed to have been so horrifying that Shirley the child, or Sibyl, just had to encapsulate that in different parts of her consciousness so she wouldn't remember it."

Journalist Flora Schreiber got involved because although Dr. Wilbur believed the case would make her famous, she wasn't a good writer. Eventually, as Schreiber started fact-checking the story, she began to doubt its veracity. But by then she had already been paid an advance, and when she confronted Dr. Wilbur and Shirley, they stuck by the story.

At the time the book was published, it was considered shaming to go to a psychiatrist, so Shirley tried to keep her identity secret. But some people did realize that Shirley Mason was Sybil. "Flora did very little to actually disguise Shirley's identity," Nathan pointed out.

Shirley had gotten a job teaching art at a college in the Midwest. But when she was effectively "outed" among colleagues, she ended up going into hiding and depending on Dr. Wilbur for support. "It was a sad ending to a very, very glittery beginning with that book," Nathan said.

Nathan went on to say that the case created a stir because it touched on issues that many women were dealing with at the time. "This was a woman's book, and the diagnosis that developed was a woman's diagnosis — 90 percent of people who have multiple personality disorder, or get diagnosed with the new name, dissociative identity disorder, are women."

Many young women wrote to Schreiber to say that Sybil's story struck a chord with them. They felt torn between the traditional female role and new opportunities that were opening up as a result of feminism. "Reading about this poor girl, who had developed all these personalities, and vanquished them, and put them all together and learned how to use them, well, that's the inspiration that I got from reading Sybil, that I can take all of my different selves and put them back together and lead a full life," Nathan said.

In Nathan's view, there are more constructive options for dealing with that tension. "To medicalize the sense of splitting and say that you are a woman who's very, very ill, because you are the ultimate victim, I think didn't do women any favours. And continues not to do them any favours."

The diagnosis of Dissociative Identity Disorder "clearly exists, when you have experts who are interested in finding it and they diagnose it," Nathan acknowledged. But she compares it to the Middle Ages, when it was assumed many people were possessed by devils. "Most women who went to the inquisitors during that period and said that they felt they had devils inside them weren't tortured to say that. They freely went to the inquisitors and the priests and said that they felt possessed."

Nathan added that it's not uncommon for people to "express their distress by feeling that there's something inside them, whether it's a demon or a spirit or a self, there's something inside them that doesn't really belong there. And depending on what's going on in the culture, and who's available to define that and treat it, you can get epidemics of that feeling, and you can get epidemics of diagnoses. So I think that that's what happened here."

She hastens to say that she isn't suggesting that people are faking their illness. "Once people get the diagnosis of Dissociative Identity Disorder, they have that diagnosis, and they act that out, not consciously, necessarily, at all," Nathan said. "So I think that asking whether it's true or it's false is not the helpful way to think of it." 

"Sybil: a name that conjures up enduring fascination for legions of obsessed fans who followed the nonfiction blockbuster from 1973 and the TV movie based on it — starring Sally Field and Joanne Woodward — about a woman named Sybil with sixteen different personalities. Sybil became both a pop phenomenon and a revolutionary force in the psychotherapy industry. The book rocketed multiple personality disorder (MPD) into public consciousness and played a major role in having the diagnosis added to the psychiatric bible, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

But what do we really know about how Sybil came to be? In her news-breaking book Sybil Exposed , journalist Debbie Nathan gives proof that the allegedly true story was largely fabricated. The actual identity of Sybil (Shirley Mason) has been available for some years, as has the idea that the book might have been exaggerated. But in Sybil Exposed , Nathan reveals what really powered the legend: a trio of women — the willing patient, her ambitious shrink and the imaginative journalist who spun their story into bestseller gold."

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10 Famous Cases Of Dissociative Identity Disorder

Dissociative identity disorder (DID), often called multiple personality disorder (MPD), has fascinated people for over a century. Although it is a very well-known disorder, mental health professionals are not even sure if it exists. It is possible that it is a form of another illness, like schizophrenia. [1] Another theory is that it doesn’t exist at all, and those who have it, including the following people, are simply acting.

10 Louis Vivet

One of the first recorded cases of multiple personalities belonged to Frenchman Louis Vivet. Born to a prostitute on February 12, 1863, Vivet was neglected as a child. By the time he was eight, he had turned to crime. He was arrested and lived in a house of treatment into his late teens.

When he was 17 years old, he worked in a vineyard, and a viper wrapped itself around his left arm. While the viper didn’t bite him, it terrified him so much that he had convulsions and psychosomatically became paralyzed from the waist down. While paralyzed, he was housed in an asylum, but he started walking again after a year. Vivet now seemed like a completely different person. He didn’t recognize any of the people at the asylum, his mood was much darker, and even his appetite was different. [2]

When he was 18, he was released from the asylum but didn’t stay out long. Over the next several years, Vivet was in and out of hospitals. During a stay between 1880 and 1881, he was diagnosed with multiple personalities. Using hypnosis and metallotherapy (placing magnets and other metals on the body), a doctor discovered up to 10 different personalities, all with their own traits and history. However, upon reviewing the case in later years, some experts believe he may have only had three personalities. [3]

9 Judy Castelli

Growing up in New York State, Judy Castelli suffered physical and sexual abuse, and afterward, she struggled with depression. A month after she enrolled in college in 1967, she was sent home by the school psychiatrist. Over the next several years, Castelli struggled with voices inside her head telling her to burn and cut herself. She nearly ruined her face, almost lost sight in one eye, and almost lost the use of one of her arms. She was also hospitalized several times for suicide attempts. Each time, she was diagnosed with chronic undifferentiated schizophrenia.

In the 1980s, she began singing in clubs and cafes in Greenwich Village. She almost got signed to a record label, but that fell through. However, she was able to find work and headlined a successful off-Broadway show. She also found success in sculpting and making stained glass.

Then, during a therapy session in 1994 with the therapist she’d had for over a decade, multiple personalities started to emerge, seven at first. As she continued her therapy, 44 personalities appeared. [4]

Since finding out that she has DID, Castelli has become a strong advocate for the disorder. She was on the board of the New York Society for the Study of Multiple Personality and Dissociation. She continues to work as an artist and teaches art to people with mental illness.

8 Robert Oxnam

Robert Oxnam is a distinguished American scholar who has spent his life studying Chinese culture. He is a former college professor, the former president of the Asian Society, and currently a private consultant for matters regarding China. While he is quite accomplished, Oxnam has struggled with his mental health.

In 1989, a psychiatrist diagnosed him with alcoholism. That changed after a session in March 1990, when Oxnam planned to leave therapy. While speaking with Oxnam, the doctor was addressed by one of his personalities, a young, angry boy named Tommy, who lived in a castle. After that session, Oxnam and his psychiatrist continued their therapy and found that Oxnam actually had 11 separate personalities.

After years of treatment, Oxnam and his psychiatrist whittled down the personalities to just three. There is Robert, or Bob, who is the core personality. Then there is Bobby, a younger, quizzical, free-spirited man who loves rollerblading in Central Park. Another is a “Buddhist-like” personality known as Wanda. Wanda used to be part of another personality known as the Witch. [5]

Oxnam wrote a memoir about his life titled A Fractured Mind: My Life With Multiple Personality Disorder . It was published in 2005. [6]

7 Kim Noble

Born in the United Kingdom in 1960, Kim Noble says her parents were factory workers who were unhappily married. From a young age, she was physically abused, and then she suffered from many mental problems as a teenager. She overdosed a few times and was placed in a mental institution.

In her twenties, her other personalities emerged, and they were incredibly destructive. Kim was a van driver, and one of her personalities named Julie took over her body and plowed the van into a bunch of parked cars. She also somehow got involved in a pedophile ring. She went to the police with information, and when she did, she started receiving anonymous threats. Then someone threw acid in her face and set her house on fire. She couldn’t remember anything about the incidents. [7]

In 1995, Noble was diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder, and she has been getting psychiatric help ever since. She is currently working as an artist, and while she does not know the exact number of personalities she has, she thinks it is somewhere around 100. She goes through about four or five different personalities a day, with Patricia being the most dominant one. Patricia is a calm, confident woman. Another notable personality is Hayley, the one involved with the pedophile ring that led to the acid attack and the fire.

Noble (as Patricia) and her daughter appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2010. She published a book about her life, All of Me: How I Learned to Live with the Many Personalities Sharing My Body , in 2012.

6 Truddi Chase

Truddi Chase claims that since she was two, in 1937, her stepfather physically and sexually assaulted her, while her mother emotionally abused her for 12 years. As an adult, Chase was under tremendous stress while working as a real estate broker. She went to a psychiatrist and discovered that she had 92 different personalities that were vastly different from each other.

The youngest was a girl about five or six years old named Lamb Chop. Another was Ean, an Irish poet and philosopher 1,000 years old. None of the personalities worked against one another and seemed to be aware of one another collectively. She didn’t want to integrate the personalities because they all had been through so much together. She referred to her personalities as The Troops.” [8]

Chase, along with her therapist, wrote the book When Rabbit Howls , and it was published in 1987. It was adapted into a TV miniseries in 1990. Chase also appeared on a very emotional segment of the Oprah Winfrey show in 1990. [9]

Chase died on March 10, 2010.

5 Karen Overhill

In 1989, Dr. Richard Baer began treating a young 20-year-old mother suffering from depression and surgical pain. She was also suicidal. After working with the woman he calls Karen Overhill, he was unsure what was happening with her. She explained to the doctor that she had gaps in her memory and that there were times when she would find herself somewhere but not remember how she got there. After a while, Dr. Baer received a letter from a 7-year-old-girl named Claire, who stated she lived inside Karen. The doctor now determined what was happening with Overhill. After three years of sessions, he finally had a diagnosis, determining that she had 17 personalities—girls, boys, women, and men.

Each personality revealed parts of Overhill’s traumatic childhood, ranging from satanic rituals to torture and rape. Her father and grandfather founded a cult that allegedly practiced ritual abuse of children, both physical and sexual. Through one of her personalities, Overhill claimed that her father and the cult took her to a funeral home after hours and placed her on an embalming table. According to the alter, her father then jabbed her in the abdomen with needles while strangers “caressed” her. Other personalities spoke of some other instances of abuse, such as being pierced with coat hangers and fish hooks, carved with knives, and beaten with hammers and baseball bats. [10]

Overhill was also allegedly raped by an older relative at the age of 12. Her alter, Jensen, was formed to help Overhill cope with this, yet another, trauma. Eventually, Dr. Baer met all 16 of her personalities and stated that she and the alters were consistent in their stories and recollections for more than 10 years, leading him to decide that she was not faking the condition. He also convicted some research after some years and discovered that Overhill’s father was convicted on 19 counts of sexual abuse in 1993. He reportedly assaulted Overhill’s niece.

After nearly twenty years of working with Overhill, Dr. Baer integrated her personalities into one and continued to treat her issues of self-esteem, self-worth, and shame over what happened to her in the past. Overhill married and had children, although she does not remember her wedding or the birth of a daughter. She is now divorced from an abusive husband and raising her children. Dr. Baer chronicled Overhill’s case in a book titled Switching Time . [11]

4 Shirley Mason

Born January 25, 1923, in Dodge Center, Minnesota, Shirley Mason apparently had a difficult childhood. Her mother, according to Mason’s accounts, was nothing less than barbaric. Her many acts of abuse included giving Shirley enemas and then filling her stomach with cold water.

Starting in 1965, Mason sought help for her mental problems, and in 1954, she started seeing Dr. Cornelia Wilbur in Omaha. In 1955, Mason told Wilbur about weird episodes where she would find herself in hotels in different cities with no idea how she got there. She would also go into shops and find herself in front of destroyed products with no clue what she had done. Shortly after the admission, different personalities started to emerge in therapy.

Mason’s story about her horrible childhood and her multiple personalities was turned into a best-selling book, Sybil . It was turned into a top-rated TV miniseries of the same name featuring Sally Fields.

While Sybil/Shirley Mason is one of the most well-known cases of DID, it also has come under a lot of scrutiny for its authenticity. Many people believe that Mason was a mentally ill woman who adored her psychiatrist, and Cornelia planted the idea of multiple personalities in her head. Mason apparently even admitted making everything up in a letter she wrote to Dr. Wilbur in May 1958, but Wilbur told her it was just her mind trying to convince her she wasn’t sick. So Mason continued with therapy. Over the years, 16 personalities emerged. [12]

In the made-for-TV version of her life, Sybil lives happily ever after, but the real Mason became addicted to barbiturates and dependent on her therapist, who paid her bills and gave her money. Mason died on February 26, 1998, from breast cancer.

3 Chris Costner Sizemore

Chris Costner Sizemore remembers her first personality split when she was about two years old. She saw a man pulled out of a ditch and thought he was dead. During this shocking event, she saw another little girl watching.

Unlike many other people diagnosed with DID, Sizemore didn’t suffer from child abuse and came from a loving home. However, from seeing that tragic event (and another gory factory accident later), Sizemore claims that she started acting strange, and family members often noticed. She would often get into trouble for things she had no memory of doing.

Sizemore sought help after the birth of her first daughter, Taffy, when she was in her early twenties. One day, one of her personalities, known as “Eve Black,” tried to strangle the baby, but “Eve White” was able to stop her. [13]

In the early 1950s, she started seeing a therapist named Corbett H. Thigpen, who diagnosed her with multiple personality disorder. While working with Thigpen, she developed a third personality named Jane. Over the next 25 years, she worked with eight different psychiatrists, and during that time, she developed a total of 22 personalities. All the personalities were quite different when it came to demeanor, age, sex, and even weight.

In July 1974, after four years of therapy with Dr. Tony Tsitos, all the personalities integrated, leaving her with just one.

Sizemore’s first doctor, Thigpen, and another doctor named Hervey M. Cleckley wrote a book about Sizemore’s case called The Three Faces of Eve . It was adapted into a film in 1957, and Joanne Woodward won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of three of Sizemore’s personalities.

Sizemore died of a heart attack in hospice care on July 24, 2016, in Ocala, Florida. She was 89 years old.

2 Billy Milligan

From October 14-26, 1977, three women around Ohio State University were kidnapped, taken to a secluded area, robbed, and raped. One woman claimed the man who raped her had a German accent, while another one claimed that (despite kidnapping and raping her) he was actually kind of a nice guy. However, one man committed the rapes: 22-year-old Billy Milligan. [14]

After his arrest, Milligan saw a psychiatrist, and he was diagnosed with DID. Altogether, he had 24 different personalities. So, when the kidnapping and rapes happened, Milligan’s defense attorney said it wasn’t Billy Milligan who was committing the crimes. Two different personalities were in control of his body—Ragen, a Yugoslavian man, and Adalana, a lesbian. The jury agreed, and he was the first American found not guilty due to DID. He was confined to a mental hospital until 1988 and released after experts thought that all the personalities had melded together. [15]

In 1981, Daniel Keyes, the award-winning author of Flowers for Algernon , released a book about Milligan’s story called The Minds of Billy Milligan . Hollywood has made several attempts at adapting the book into a feature film. None have yet to be made, but it may be developed into a 10-episode TV series in 2021.

Milligan died from cancer on December 12, 2014, at the age of 59.

1 Juanita Maxwell

In 1979, 23-year-old Juanita Maxwell was working as a hotel maid in Fort Myers, Florida. In March that year, 72-year-old hotel guest Inez Kelley was brutally murdered; she was beaten, bitten, and choked to death. Maxwell was arrested because she had blood on her shoes and a scratch on her face. She claimed she had no idea what happened. [16]

While awaiting trial, Maxwell saw a psychiatrist, and when she went to trial, she pleaded not guilty because she had multiple personalities. She had six personalities besides her own, and one of the dominant personalities, Wanda Weston, committed the murder.

At her trial, the defense team, through the use of a social worker, drew Wanda out on the stand. The judge thought that the transformation was quite remarkable. Juanita was a soft-spoken woman, but Wanda was boisterous and flirtatious and liked violence. She laughed while she admitted to beating the senior citizen with a lamp over a disagreement about a pen. The judge was convinced that she either had multiple personalities or deserved an Academy Award.

Maxwell was sent to a psychiatric hospital, where she says she didn’t get proper treatment and simply received tranquilizers. She was released, but in 1988, she was again arrested, this time for robbing two banks. She again claimed Wanda did it; the pressure of the outside was too much, and Wanda had taken over again. She pleaded “no contest” and was released from prison for time served. [17]

Robert Grimminck is a Canadian crime-fiction writer. You can follow him on Facebook , on Twitter , or visit his website .

More Great Lists

Dissociative Identity Disorder Cases: Famous and Amazing

There are many famous dissociative identity disorder (DID) cases, probably because people are so fascinated by the disorder. While DID is rare, detailed reports of DID have existed since the 18th century. Famous cases of dissociative identity disorder have been featured on the Oprah Winfrey show, in books and have been seen in criminal trials. (See Real Dissociative Identity Disorder Stories and Videos and Celebrities and Famous People with DID )

A Dissociative Identity Disorder Case in Court: Billy Milligan

In 1977, Billy Milligan was arrested for kidnapping, robbing and raping three women around Ohio State University. After being arrested, he saw a psychiatrist who diagnosed him with DID (See how DID is diagnosed ). It was argued in court that Milligan wasn't guilty as, at the time of the crimes, two other personalities were in control -- Ragen, a Yugoslavian man and Adalana, a lesbian ( Understanding Dissociative Identity Disorder Alters ).

The jury agreed with the defense and Milligan became the first person ever to be found not guilty due to dissociative identity disorder . Milligan was confined to a mental hospital until 1988 when psychiatrists felt that all the personalities had melded together.

An upcoming film, The Crowded Room , will be based on his famous case of dissociative identity disorder.

Famous Cases of DID: Kim Noble

Kim Noble was born in 1960 and, from a young age, was physically abused. As a teenager, she suffered many mental problems and overdosed several times.

It wasn't until her 20s that other personalities began to appear. "Julie" was a very destructive personality that ran Noble's van into a bunch of parked cars. "Hayley," another personality, was involved in a pedophile ring.

In 1995, Noble received a DID diagnosis and has been getting psychiatric help ever since. It's not known how many personalities Noble has as she goes through four or five personalities a day, but it is thought to be around 100. "Patricia" is Noble's most dominant personality and she is a calm and confident woman.

Noble (as Patricia) and her daughter appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2010. In 2012, she published a book about her experiences: All of Me: How I Learned to Live with the Many Personalities Sharing My Body.

A Dissociative Disorder Case Study

In 2005, a dissociative identity disorder case study of a woman named "Kathy" (not her real name) was published in Journal of the Islamic Medical Association of North America.

Kathy's traumas began when she was three. At that age, she would have terrible nightmares during which her parents would often entertain leaving the child to cry for hours before falling asleep only to awake a few hours later frightened and screaming.

At age four, Kathy found her father in bed with a five-year-old neighbor. At that time, her father convinced her to join in on the sexual activity. Kathy felt guilty and cried for several hours only stopping once she began to attribute what had happened to an alternate personality, Pat. Kathy would insist on being called Pat during the abuse the father committed for the next five years.

At age nine, Kathy's mother discovered Kathy and her father in bed together. Her mother insisted on the child sleeping in her bed every night thereafter leading to a sexual relationship with the child. Kathy could not accept this and created another identity, Vera, who continued the relationship for another five years.

At age 14, Kathy was raped by her father's best friend and began calling herself Debbie. At that time, she became very depressed and mute and was admitted to a hospital (read why some go to dissociative identity (DID) treatment centers ).

According to the case study, "she showed a mixture of depression, dissociation and trance-like symptoms, with irritability and extensive manipulation which caused confusion and frustration among the hospital staff."

At age 18, Kathy became very attached to her boyfriend but her parents forbid her to see him. Kathy then ran away from home to a new town. However, she could not find a job and her need of money drove her to prostitution. She began to call herself Nancy at this point.

The alternate personality Debbie rejected Nancy and forced her to overdose on sleeping pills. It was then that Kathy was admitted to a psychiatric hospital and given the diagnosis of multiple personality disorder (as it was known at the time). (More on the history of dissociative identity disorder here.)

Kathy is now 29, married, and continues to struggle with mental health problems including dissociative episodes.

article references

APA Reference Tracy, N. (2022, January 4). Dissociative Identity Disorder Cases: Famous and Amazing, HealthyPlace. Retrieved on 2024, September 24 from https://www.healthyplace.com/abuse/dissociative-identity-disorder/dissociative-identity-disorder-cases-famous-and-amazing

Medically reviewed by Harry Croft, MD

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Exploring Multiple Personalities In 'Sybil Exposed'

In a new book writer Debbie Nathan digs into archived material documenting the experiences of a patient known as "Sybil," who reportedly suffered from multiple personality disorder. Ira Flatow and guests discuss MPD, and its modern equivalent—dissociative identity disorder.

Debbie Nathan , author: "Sybil Exposed: The Extraordinary Story Behind The Famous Multiple Personality Case" (Free Press, 2011), New York, N.Y.

Paul McHugh , University distinguished service professor of psychiatry, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md.

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Three Cases of Dissociative Identity Disorder and Co-Occurring Borderline Personality Disorder Treated with Dynamic Deconstructive Psychotherapy

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• Dissociative Identity Disorder
• Borderline Personality Disorder
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• hypnotherapy
• dissociation
• dissociative disorders
• psychotherapy
• individual psychotherapy
• analytical psychotherapy

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Famous Cases Of Dissociative Identity Disorder

Think back to a time where you had a bit too much to drink. The next day, could you remember what your drunken self had done? Now, remove the alcohol. If you still drew a blank, you would have something in common with these famous cases of dissociative identity disorder .

Dissociative identity disorder (DID), formerly referred to as multiple personality disorder, is when a person manifests two or more distinct personalities that switch off controlling the body. The "blackout" periods are where the dissociative part comes in. Often the personalities have no memory of what went on when other personalties were in charge. In other words, the individual may have no clue that the other personalities even exist.

Usually, there is a dominant personality and one or more "alters." Which personality is dominant can actually change over the years. Sometimes the alternate personalities appear as hostile, foreign invaders to the dominant personality, and can be mistaken for cases of demonic possession. Real cases of DID are extremely rare, and are almost always the result of extreme trauma or abuse. The disorder serves as a psychological coping mechanism in which the psyche compartmentalizes the trauma. Ultimately, the disorder is a failure to integrate various memories, personality traits, identity, and consciousness into a single, multidimensional persona.

These are real people with dissociative identity disorder. All of their stories are true, and well documented. Beyond the sensationalism of tales like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a very real psychological concern that, while rare, can be extremely difficult to live with.

Juanita Maxwell's Alter Committed Murder

• Matt MacGillivray

Juanita Maxwell has no memory of beating 73-year-old Inez Kelly to death with a lamp in 1979. Wanda Weston, however, remembers the incident with glee. She admitted as much during the murder trial . The catch: Juanita and Wanda happen to occupy the same person.

Maxwell had been working as a maid at the hotel where Kelly was staying. According to Wanda, Kelly had borrowed her pen, but refused to give it back. Wanda went into Kelly's room, and when the older woman asked her to leave, killed her.

After Maxwell's alter was coaxed out during her trial, the judge ruled that she was not guilty due to insanity. Maxwell was committed to a mental institution.

Herschel Walker Has A Personality That Excels At Football

• Braydon Williams
• U.S. Air Force
• Public Domain

Former NFL running back Herschel Walker wrote about his struggle managing multiple personalities in his book, Breaking Free . As a child, Walker was overweight and had a speech impediment. He thinks that he first began developing DID as a coping mechanism . The highly motivated "warrior" was one of Walker's alters who drove his physical fitness and football ability. Another alter, "the hero," was his public face. For years, he managed the disorder without really understanding what it was. He doesn't even remember receiving the Heisman Trophy.

After Walker retired from football, his different personalities started to become jumbled. He fell into depression, at one point playing Russian Roulette with himself. Walker's wife, Cindy Grossman, left him after an episode where he pointed a gun at her head. It was at this point that Walker sought psychiatric help and was diagnosed with DID.

The Real "Three Faces Of Eve"

• The 3 Faces of Eve
• Fawcett Popular Library

The book and 1957 film  The Three Faces of Eve were based on the real case of Chris Costner Sizemore . Sizemore, who died in 2016, actually had 22 distinct personalities. In the book and film, she was portrayed as having only three: Eve White, Eve Black, and Jane.

In reality, Jane's emergence was not the end of Sizemore's suffering . Jane, like Eve White and Eve Black, died, being replaced by ever more personalities . There was the Banana Split Girl, who would only eat said dessert, the Spoon Lady, who collected spoons, and many more. The personalities also ranged in skill sets; some could drive, and others couldn't.

It wasn't until four years of therapy with her eighth doctor, Tony Tsitos, that Sizemore was able to start integrating her personalities. She once said she had a dream where "the personalities were in a kind of Greek arena. They all joined hands and then walked behind a screen and then everything disappeared. They have never come back."

Karen Overhill

Is it possible to cure DID? In the case of the patient known as Karen Overhill , the answer was yes. When she was 29 years old, Overhill was referred to Dr. Richard Baer for treatment for her depression. Throughout their sessions, she began revealing how she had been abused by both her father and her grandfather. Dr. Baer treated Overhill for over 20 years as he slowly discovered the truth: she had 17 different personalities.

By using hypnosis and visualization, Dr. Baer was able to help Overhill reintegrate her personalities into one functioning whole. He wrote about her fascinating case in Switching Time: A Doctor's Harrowing Story of Treating a Woman With 17 Personalities . Overhill contributed some of her letters, journal entries, and art to the book. 

Kim Noble Has Four Switches Per Day

• Chicago Review Press

Imagine keeping over 100 different personalities straight. That is the life of Kim Noble , told in the autobiographical book All Of Me .

Noble was born in 1960 to two unhappily married factory workers in England. Her childcare was outsourced to friends and family, and at some point between the age of one and three she suffered from extreme and repeated abuse. It was at this point that her psyche splintered, completely compartmentalizing the trauma.

Her condition went undiagnosed through adolescence, even when she was put on suicide watch in a psychiatric hospital after frequent overdosing. In her 20s, a sudden switch resulted in her plowing a van into a line of parked cars. This resulted in another mental health examination, and the diagnosis of schizophrenia.

After being released from the mental hospital, Noble somehow ended up caught up with a pedophile ring. When she reported it to the police, she started receiving threats of retaliation. A man threw acid in her face, someone lit her bed on fire with her in it, and while she escaped, her house was completely gutted. She has no recollection of the incident.

In 1995, Noble was finally diagnosed with DID. Her dominant personality is named Patricia, and under her care, Noble has become an artist and lives with her daughter.

Shirley Mason Made Up Her DID

• Lorimar Productions/NBC
• Wikimedia Commons

One of the most famous cases of DID ever recorded is likely a lie , according to a new book, Sybil Exposed , by Debbie Nathan. The book and miniseries  Sybil  - starring Sally Fields - follows the life of a woman who has DID. It was supposedly a true story, but it seems that the real-life Sybil, Shirley Mason, faked her condition.

Mason initially sought psychiatric attention because she was emotionally unstable. She became attached to her physician, Dr. Connie Wilbur, who had a fascination with multiple personality disorder (as DID used to be called). To get more attention, Mason came in one day and starting claiming to be a different person, talking in a childish voice and changing her mannerisms.

On one occasion, Mason tried to admit that she was faking it, but her confession was dismissed as part of her psychosis. Interestingly, therapist Herbert Spiegel, who saw Mason from time to time, also said that she was probably malingering (faking it) in 1997.

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Rorschach Assessment of Two Distinctive Personality States of a Person With Dissociative Identity Disorder

Affiliation.

• 1 a Department of Psychology , University of Oslo , Oslo , Norway.
• PMID: 29236543
• DOI: 10.1080/00223891.2017.1391273

This case study used test data from a patient with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID; American Psychiatric Association, 2013 ) to illustrate how two main personality states of the patient ("Ann" and "Ben") seemed to function. The Rorschach Performance Assessment System (R-PAS; Meyer, Viglione, Mihura, Erard, & Erdberg, 2011 ) and the Inventory of Interpersonal Problems-Circumplex (IIP-64; Horowitz, Alden, Wiggins, & Pincus, 2000 ), administered to Ann and Ben in separate settings, exposed two diverse R-PAS and IIP-64 profiles. Ann's R-PAS profile suggested an intellectualized style of information processing with few indications of psychological problems. Ben's profile indicated severe perceptual, cognitive, and interpersonal difficulties combined with suspicion and anxiety. Ann's IIP-64 profile suggested minor interpersonal problems, whereas Ben's indicated serious relational difficulties. The findings were discussed in relation to the theory of trauma-related structural dissociation of the personality (van der Hart, Nijenhuis, & Steele, 2006 ), which implies an enduring split in the organization of the personality with more or less separate entities with their own sense of self, perception of the world, and ways of organizing emotional, cognitive, and social functions. The DID personality structure is seen as a defense strategy and as a pathway in the personality development producing serious psychological pain and symptoms.

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Dissociative Identity Disorder and the Law: Guilty or Not Guilty?

Stefane m. kabene.

1 Department of Psychology, Canadian University Dubai, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Nazli Balkir Neftci

Efthymios papatzikis.

2 Department of Early Childhood Education and Care, Oslo Metropolitan University, Oslo, Norway

Dissociative identity disorder (DID) is a dissociative disorder that gained a significant rise in the past few decades. There has been less than 50 DID cases recorded between 1922 and 1972, while 20,000 cases are recorded by 1990. Therefore, it becomes of great significant to assess the various concepts related to DID to further understand the disorder. The current review has a goal of understanding whether an individual suffering from DID is legally responsible for the committed crime, and whether or not he or she can be considered competent to stand trial. These two questions are to be raised in understanding DID, by first shedding a light on the nature of the disorder and second by examining the past legal case examples. Despite the very nature of the disorder is characterized by dissociative amnesia and the fact that the host personality may have limited or no contact with the alters, there is no consensus within the legal system whether the DID patients should be responsible for their actions. Further to that, courts generally deny the insanity claims for DID suffering patients. In conclusion, more studies in the field are suggested to incorporate primary data into research, as the extensive reliance on secondary data forces us to believe the conclusions that were previously made, and no opportunity to verify those conclusions is present.

Introduction

Dissociative identity disorder (DID) is classified by DSM-V as “presence of two or more distinct identities or personality states, each with its own patterns of perceiving, thinking, and relating to the environment and the self” where “at least two of these identities or personality states recurrently take control of the person’s behavior” ( American Psychiatric Association, 2013 ). The fact that the DID patients’ multiple identities not only perform differently on personality tests, but also on IQ tests was long since discovered by the predecessor studies in 1950s. It has been also shown that the identities may also differ in age, gender, preferences, and even handwriting (see Figure 1 ; Thigpen and Cleckley, 1954 ). Such gigantic difference between the identities and the fact that some identities may not be aware of others’ doings raises the question of legal responsibility of a person suffering from DID should a law be violated by one of the identities within him.

The letter sent to the psychiatrists involved in the case of Chris Sizemore by the patient, Mrs. Sizemore. The sudden change in the handwriting can be observed in the last paragraph of the letter.

Another legal issue concerned with DID is competence to stand trial. As minor identities may “come out” during the process of the trial, and the dominant identity may have no awareness and/or memory of the actions and events that took place under control of minor identities, it becomes unclear of whether the person under trials is able to completely understand all the happenings during the trials. If that is the case, the question may arise as of person’s competency to stand the trial, not even the legal liabilities that he must incur given the crimes committed. To this aim, the initial attempt will be the examination of the clinical and neuropsychological characteristics of DID by the screening of recent studies that contributed to a better understanding of the disorder. This will provide a foundation for the framework that would in its turn attempt to define whether DID should be in all instances considered a valid reason for the person’s incompetence to stand trial or the person’s legal non-liability for the crime. Subsequently, the current review will examine the existing cases in which the DID patients had to face trials and the sentences they were or were not given. The paper will also attempt to formulate the conditions under which such patients are proven insane, based on the above-mentioned cases. The paper will then analyze the existing materials covering the encounters of DID patients who have committed crimes with the courts and the law enforcement system in general. A further emphasis will be given to the criteria that the courts use when dealing with issue of calling an DID patient to the legal liability. The extent to which the existing laws protecting criminals with mental issues can be applied particularly to DID patients will constitute a part in the current paper. Based on the review performed, the comparison will be made on how well the suggested framework aligns with the current tendencies in law enforcement on sentencing or not sentencing patients suffering from DID.

Current review will only focus on the analysis of secondary data due to the rarity of legal cases concerning DID patients. Therefore, the amount of cases will be too limited to find distinctive patterns in the features of DID symptoms, and the framework suggested will not be as comprehensive, hence, it will not be able to provide reasonable suggestions to the users. Despite using the secondary data as a source of information for the analysis, it must be noticed that the amount of trials involving DID is still very limited. Therefore, another focus of the paper will be on finding the traits in the symptoms of the DID patients not violating the law and hence not standing a trial.

Dissociative Phenomenology and Dissociative Identity

Dissociative identity disorder, formerly called multiple personality disorder, was first classified in DSM-III-R ( American Psychiatric Association, 1987 ). As it has been seen more commonly in the past 20 years among patients, DID remained as an Axis I disorder in DSM-IV-TR with the renaming of multiple personality disorder to DID ( American Psychiatric Association, 2000 ). Both in DSM-III-R and DSM-IV-TR the diagnostic criteria were laud and clear for that times, but in the context of the current information regarding DID they seem quite sketchy. Unsurprisingly, in 1999, in a survey of board certified psychiatrists in the United States only 21% reported that there is an evidence for DID’s scientific validity ( Gharaibeh, 2009 ). Apparently, the lack of consensus was not an issue in the legal system but also among the mental health care professionals as well. In an effort to overcome this issue, in 2013, American Psychological Association Work Group has proposed slight changes in the diagnostic criteria for DSM-5, in which “the symptoms of disruption of identity may be reported as well as observed, and that gaps in the recall of events may occur for everyday and not just traumatic events” ( American Psychiatric Association, 2013 ). Furthermore, as time progressed, more scientific evidence is being provided by the recent studies scrutinizing the experience of dissociation and its manifestation as DID, leaving little room for any clinical disagreement.

Current definition of dissociation refers to a detachment from one’s sensory experiences, thoughts, feelings, sense of identity or personal history, that occur in reaction to a traumatic experience ( Pollock et al., 2017 ). Dialectical in nature, on one hand it serves as a coping strategy that allows individuals to distance themselves from a trauma that may otherwise be unbearable, on the other it prevents an integration between the trauma and personal narrative, which is a must for the recovery. By manifesting itself in various forms, in depersonalization and derealization an individual has difficulty in processing information about the self and the reality at the present time. In dissociative amnesia the traumatic memory is reserved away from one’s memories and can only be recalled by dissociative flashbacks. In DID, the traumatic information is stored in different parts of the identity, so called alters. Among the others DID manifests the most complex clinical portrait, that is predisposed by prolonged childhood trauma ( Ozturk and Sar, 2016 ). According to Loewenstein and Putnam (1990) , the stories of male and female patients had a root from the past where 60% of females had causes related to sexual abuse whereas, 17% of male patients suffered from violence or rape in childhood. In description, DID is characterized by the coexistence of the host and alter identities that are fragmented from each other with limited or no communication. A recent theory identified 13 alter identities, namely, the apparently natural, helper, persecutor, child, gay/lesbian, messenger, abuser (perpetrator), leader (guide, wise), objective (neutral), reversible, talented, suicidal-depressive and potent female, all of which have varying awareness by the host personality. Furthermore, three forms of awareness of the personalities by the host personality were identified: (1) mutual amnesic, (2) unidirectional amnesic, and (3) co-conscious. Although there might be a co-conscious awareness between an alter and the host personality, the degree of recognition between the alter personalities is quite limited. This is due to the fact that each alter contains varying degrees of awareness of the traumatic memories and experiences his or her subjective reality accordingly, resulting in a dissociative barrier ( Ozturk and Sar, 2016 ; Ozturk, 2021 ).

Several comorbidities are reported among patients with DID, including major depression, somatization disorder and borderline personality disorders, which are among the most commons. Auditory hallucinations, dissociative amnesia, flashbacks and childhood abuse/neglect are other features seen in patients with DID, which are overlapping with the symptoms of other conditions such as PTSD and Schizophrenia. Particularly, Schizophrenia and DID overlap in psychotic symptoms, Schneiderian first rank symptoms in particular, as well as in their traumatic antecedents. However, the differentiation between DID and schizophrenia can be made along several criteria. For instance, poor reality testing and insight of the disorder are observed in schizophrenia, whereas both reality testing and insight remains intact in DID. Unlike schizophrenia, visual hallucinations are quite rare among patients with DID. Schizophrenia is characterized by loose associations with inappropriate affect, however, DID patients manifest conjectural associations with appropriate affect. Still, many patients receive different diagnoses because of lack of awareness of this condition ( Tschoke et al., 2011 ). As for the etiopathology of DID very little is known and the studies in this field are just a few. However, there is recent evidence demonstrating neuroanatomical differences between DID patients and health controls. The research revealed that cortical and subcortical volumes in the hippocampus, amygdala, parietal structures that are responsible for perception and personal awareness as well as frontal structures, which is responsible for movement execution and fear learning were significantly smaller in DID patients. Furthermore, in DID patients larger white matter tracts were detected, which is involved in information communication between somatosensory association areas, basal ganglia, and the precuneus. It was concluded that such neuroanatomical differences might be responsible for some of the symptoms of DID such as host dissociation and neurotic defense mechanisms ( Blihar et al., 2020 ). Apparently, more studies need to be conducted in order to reveal the etiopathology of DID for the recognition of the disorder both legally and clinically.

Despite the complexity of its nature, there are promising treatment models proposed by various professionals, who have a long-standing experience with DID patients (e.g., Kluft, 1999 ; Pollock et al., 2017 ). Trauma Based Alliance Model Therapy (TBAMT), for instance, provides a detailed theoretical framework in conceptualizing DID and proposes an evidence-based psychotherapy intervention techniques with a detailed psychotherapy protocol. By proposing an eclectic approach, TBAMT highlights the critical importance of forming therapeutic alliance with the host and all of the other alter personalities. This is for the fusion of each of the alter with the host personality so as to neutralize the traumatic experience by integrating the trauma related autobiographical memories of the alters, which the degree and the content varies for each of them ( Ozturk, 2021 ).

As can be concluded, within the last decade, the scientific advancements in understanding of DID has improved significantly. Integration of the recent clinical findings in the legal system would contribute to a consensus regarding whether claims for NGRI-DID can be accepted. Still, there is an incomprehensible challenge in the forensic assessment of DID patients claiming for the reason of insanity for crimes based on a dissociated state ( Farrell, 2011a ).

Dissociative Identity Disorder in the Courtroom

In order to understand the complexities of DID and its relationship with law, one should start the examination by starting from its history ( Table 1 ). The first encounter with DID has taken its place in 1815, when a patient, Mary Reynolds, who, according to Rayna L. Rogers, “might sleep eighteen hours a day and then awaken with large discrepancies in her memory, penmanship and disposition” ( Rogers, 1991 ). The first case of DID that has attracted significant public attention was that of Chris Sizemore, a story of a female patient diagnosed with DID, presented in 1954 by Thigpen and Cleckley. In this case, patient suffering from DID had two very distinctive identities, named by the psychiatrists as Eve White and Eve Black. In Eve’s case, Eve White could be considered as a dominant personality, as Eve Black’s appearances were relatively rare prior to the beginning of the treatment. Eve White and Eve Black had remarkably different behavioral traits. Furthermore, Eve White had no memories of actions done by Eve Black, while Eve Black had a complete awareness of Eve White’s expriences. Thigpen and Cleckley (1954) discussed an event, recalled only by Eve Black and the patient’s relatives, on how Eve committed a prohibited act, specifically she was “wandering through the woods to play with the children of a tenant farmer.” In this particular act, Eve Black only appeared to commit the wrongdoing and let Eve White take on the punishment that followed. The case of Eve becomes an argument that would support protecting DID patients from facing the legal liability for the illegal actions committed. If the person (in the above case Eve White) has no memory of the wrongdoing that cannot be explained by the regular forgetfulness, she may not be considered liable for the crime. However, it must be noticed that while Eve White must be considered innocent, Eve Black could not be exempted from the liability, if we consider two of them as separate identities. Eve Black herself is a sane personality that could appreciate the wrongdoing and the consequences that would follow. During the years ahead, this method was proposed and adopted with some courts that have faced DID patients. These courts have classified the distinct identities of DID patient as separate identities, and therefore sentenced only one or several identities that were in a way or other committing to a crime. Steinberg et al. (1993) examined the results of DID patients facing trials and have demonstrated the reasoning applied by the Supreme Court of Hawaii, that deals with DID suspects in a way that “each identity may or may not be criminally responsible for its acts, each must be examined under the ALI (American Law Institute) Modal Penal Code competency test.”

Court cases where DID was claimed as a basis for NGRI.

This method of judging several identities, however, contradicts itself. On one hand, only the personality that has committed a crime will be sentenced to a punishment. However, as all the identities in case of DID share one common physical body including the innocent ones, are subject to the punishment given by the court. Saks (1995) has proposed a theory of general non-responsibility of individuals with DID. Saks’s theory treats identities within an DID patient as separate identities, and therefore claims that courts must not hold DID patients responsible for the crimes unless all the identities existing within a person are involved in a crime, meaning they were either committing a crime or could have interfered and prevent the crime but did not. As per Saks, such theory would correlate with the system of jurisprudence that holds that “ten guilty people should go free rather than one innocent person be jailed” ( Sinnott-Armstrong and Behnke, 2000 ). The research conducted by Farrell (2011a) suggests that courts in general do not accept NGRI-DID (not guilty by reason of insanity due to DID) as a justification for non-responsibility. The reasoning for the rejection of DID as a reason is based on several factors. First one is based on the reason that “scientific evidence failed to meet reliability standards.” Second, abnormal states of consciousness is an insufficient allegation to correspond to a mental disorder that could meet the criteria of M’Naghten Rules (i.e., defendants did not know the nature or quality of their actions or, if they did know, they did not know that what they were doing was wrong) ( Farrell, 2011b ). In response to this, Nakic and Thomas (2012) reported that the British courts that are more indulgent to the diagnosis of DID have used several approaches to assess criminal responsibilities of DID cases. The alter in-control approach is used to assess the mental state of the alter identity, who was in control when the crime was committed. In the each-alter approach all of the alter identities are assessed for their criminal responsibility. Finally, the host approach examines whether the host personality was unable to evaluate the nature and quality of the conduct committed by the alter. The utilization of the aforementioned approaches will be illustrated in some of the following case examples.

Getting back to the courtrooms, the case of Juanita Maxwell that took place in Florida in 1979 was considered as one of the most unusual at that time. Maxwell was working as a hotel maid and was arrested because of the blood on her shoes and a scratch. Apparently, one of the hotel guests, Inez Kelley, was brutally beaten, bitten, and choked to death. Later on, the murderer was diagnosed with DID where she had six identities. In addition, the identity who committed the crime was called Wanda Weston that was asked to stand trial. People were impressed because Juanita was a soft woman with calm behavior, however, Wanda seemed to be more aggressive and violent ( McLeod, 1991 ). Furthermore, she was even laughing when admitted that she killed a person. As she was a woman suffering from DID, the court found her non-guilty and sent the patient to a psychiatric hospital. In 1988, Maxwella was arrested again for committing two bank robberies and claimed that it happened due to not receiving a proper treatment. By that time, Maxwell had seven identities, but Wanda was still pinned as the culprit of the crimes. Finally, she pleaded “no contest” and was released from prison for time served ( Levy et al., 2002 ).

The case of Thomas Huskey that took a place in Knoxville, brought up a broader question of whether DID is a valid defense for the crime. The man viciously killed four women after forcing them to have sex. In addition, he audiotaped himself with a loud and angry voice during the murder. Lawyers claimed that even though Huskey may have been speaking, the words were coming from an alter ego that took control of his actions ( Haliman, 2015 ). Moreover, the defense attorneys claimed that the tape of other personality so-called Kyle is not a proof that Thomas – a soft-spoken and calm man – committed any crime. Prosecutors asked an expert, Dr. Herbert Spiegel, to evaluate the presence of multiple identities and how each could impact the actions made by one human. Interestingly, the vocabulary, tone, and manner of talking were completely different in both identities when the professionals agreed it was the voice of the same person. One of the psychiatrists claimed Huskey was just a good actor and had an incredible ability to manipulate people ( Appalachian Unsolved, 2017 ). The court had only two options: whether find him guilty of the crime or non-guilty due to DID and signs of insanity. No matter how attorneys tried to defend Huskey, the majority of jurors came to a conclusion that he needs punishment for his crimes, and he is currently serving a 64-year sentence.

Speaking of “alter approach” (the approach under which the courts decide on person’ responsibility based on sanity or insanity of the alter in control during the crime), many courts have judged based on these criteria. In case of Grimsley, a woman accused of drunk driving and pleading for NGRI-DID, the court have concluded that “there was only one person driving the car and only one person accused of drunken driving. It is immaterial whether she was in one state of consciousness or another, so long as in the personality then controlling her behavior, she was conscious, and her actions were a product of her own volition. The evidence failed to indicate that Jennifer was unconscious or otherwise acting involuntarily” ( Sinnott-Armstrong and Behnke, 2000 ).

A possible reason that can explain the courts’ tendency to reject the NGRI-DID is the social response to the successful defenses based on that reason. The case in 1978, at which the defendant, Billy Milligan, who was a serial rapist, was found innocent for the reason of insanity (NGRI-DID), found an extreme outrage in the society. Since then, it was a very rare phenomenon to see courts accepting DID as a justification for insanity. Undeniably, the social response to DID hinders the objective judgment of DID-diagnosed patients for their legal responsibility. Certain psychiatrists do not believe in the DID at all, and there is a great suspicion over the ease of malingering DID in order to plead for insanity. The reason behind the thinking is the extreme complexity of symptoms that leads to the difficulty in the scientific evaluation of the patient’s disease.

The research conducted by Nakic and Thomas (2012) presents the case of Goering Orndorff, a woman who has killed her husband and altered a crime scene in a way that the scene presented her actions as a self-defense. During the process of the trials, specialists were asked to evaluate her competency to stand the trial due to the existence of dissociative symptoms. Some of the experts have agreed on DID diagnosis being applied to Mrs. Orndorff and presented their opinions during the trial. However, it was later revealed that the crime scene was intentionally altered, and that Mrs. Orndorff has told her cellmate that she attempts to malinger the DID in order to plead for insanity defense. With the account of all these facts, the court has found her guilty and sentenced her to 32 years of imprisonment. The later motions for new hearing proposed by the defense, were rejected by the courts.

Even though the people diagnosed with DID seem as no danger to the society at first, the statistics conducted by clinicians shows that nearly half of the patients had violent behavior ( Webermann and Brand, 2017 ). Since there is a sign of aggressiveness, the probability of committing a crime is relatively high and hard to be prevented due to a dissimilar behavior under each of the identities. At the same time, psychiatrists claimed that criminals tend to malinger DID in order to be defended by the law of insanity ( Saks, 1995 ). However, faking DID is considerably difficult because the person should be able to completely separate characters and fully control the actions and mind over a prolonged time. According to the case of Ms. Moore, there were two identities that acquiesced in the crime and found responsible for their actions. First of all, Billy Joel was a personality that actually terrorized a group of children and even ended up beating one of them to death. Then, there was the other identity so-called Marie Moore that would actually call herself pretending it is Billy with children’s daily instructions. Moreover, she even deflected the police when under suspicion. In this case, Ms. Moore could not be diagnosed with DID because both of her identities knew about the crime and actually took an action. Apparently, she was not mentally stable and could still have some mitigation but her claim of suffering from DID was completely rejected ( Moore, 1988 ).

Nevertheless, people diagnosed with DID can put not only themselves in trouble but also confuse the others around them by an abnormal change of mood and behavior. The case of Mark Peterson took place in Oshkosh in 1990, however, the psychiatrists found a progressive disorder where the number of identities was increasing and even represented changes of age in the majority of them ( Possley, 2014 ). Mark Peterson was a victim of dealing with a woman diagnosed with DID where she agreed to have intercourse with a 29-year-old man. The identity that emerged during that time was 20 years old when the other 6-year-old identity was watching from a different perspective. Later on, Mark was charged and convicted of second-degree sexual assault because it is illegal to have an intercourse with someone who is mentally ill. In addition, at the time of the incident in June woman had 21 identities, when later during the trial in November prosecutors discovered that this number has increased to 46. Even though Peterson was never retried for the crime after the overturned a month later verdict, the case brought up questions about how to deal with DID victims that claim to be assaulted during the presence of one of the identities.

Another cause of concern, as in the case of Peterson, is taking into consideration how to deal not only with DID patients who committed a crime but also how to punish the people who were interacting illegally and harmed one of the identities ( Possley, 2014 ). The action can be done by one identity and it will be considered acceptable when the other identity will look at that as a crime. However, the same human might not remember doing any of these since the switch of the identities happens naturally and the memory of past actions usually do not interfere with one another. Meanwhile, the prosecutors tend to end the trial faster in order not to put the victim in the position of psychological trauma all over again.

Discussion and Analysis

The literature review suggests a general tendency from the courts’ side not to accept the DID propositions and hence exempt the person from the responsibility on the basis of NGRI-DID. The major reasons for the tendency were lack of reliability of scientific methods in diagnosing DID, the possibility of a suspect to malinger DID in such a way that certain specialists will give the desired diagnosis (Ms. Orndorff’s case), the social response to the successful defense based on NGRI-DID, and the immaterial fact of DID, as related to the legal responsibility (the alter in control being sane and competent to stand the trial). Moreover, the case of Maxwell clearly showed that the person can commit the crime again when the society will hardly accept the decision of non-guiltiness. Therefore, the prosecutors tend to find criminals responsible due to the past experience and research done on DID.

The complexity of DID is also supported through the differences in the opinions on the reliability of the tests administered with the purpose of diagnosing DID. It has been suggested by Steinberg that the introduction of Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-III-R (SCID) and the Schedule for Schizophrenia for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia (SADS) has increased the reliability in diagnosing disorders such as DID ( Steinberg et al., 1993 ). The case of Ms. Orndorff, however, has happened in 2000 and suggests that the diagnostic capabilities in terms of DID were still lacking and hence insufficient to accurately diagnose DID.

As was mentioned before, the courts do have a tendency to deny the NGRI-DID claims for the DID patients that commit crimes. However, it becomes interesting to check on whether similar illnesses, such as epileptic seizures, face the same level of denials in the courts. Epileptic seizures resemble DID in terms of legal responsibility in a way that during a seizure, a person may engage in “actions such as picking at the clothes, trying to remove them, walking about aimlessly, picking up things, or mumbling” ( Farrell, 2011b ). Of greater importance is the fact that “following the seizure, there will be no memory of it” ( Farrell, 2011a ). As the actions performed during a seizure are involuntary, the person is unable to appreciate the actions or the consequences that follow, and has no memory of the events, not explained by the regular forgetfulness, the court should consider the person insane at the moment of committing a crime. Farrell elaborates on three cases of successful defenses on the basis of “non-insane automatism” (the definition under which courts nowadays classify epileptic seizures). In all cases, the courts have declared the defendants not guilty of the crimes, as their actions were involuntary, and the defendants had no memory of the events.

It is interesting in the light of above-mentioned cases to see the drastic difference in the courts’ opinions about the similar illnesses in terms of legal responsibility. In both cases, the defendants have no memory of the actions committed. However, it must also be presented that DID patients generally have an identity within them that was aware of the wrongdoing and also carries the memory of that wrongdoing, while under epileptic seizures there is not a single trace that would suggest that the defendant has a memory of a wrongful conduct. One could also argue that while considering the epilepsy-suffering patient, we are concerned with a single identity that is a subject to a biological illness and therefore, it becomes easy to say that the person’s actions were indeed involuntary, while considering the DID, we are talking about totally different identities with their own mindset within a single individual with a very limited information regarding its etiopathology. It means that the court can be reasonably confident in the reliability of epilepsy truly belonging to an individual, while an DID patient can potentially malinger the illness. Even though a few studies have emerged within the last a few years investigating the neurological correlates of DID, the research in this domain is still in the stage of infancy.

Taking a look at the root causes of the DID, it is found that severe psychological trauma or prolonged abuse in the childhood are the most possible reasons that cause the brain to trigger the self-defense mechanisms and protect itself through the dissociation of identities. As the effect of DID is not happening on its own and is occurring following a severe trauma, it should be considered a mental illness and thus be a sufficient reason for claiming the person to be not guilty by the reason of insanity (NGRI-DID). Moreover, both genders can be exposed to any kind of assault or negative experience in the childhood and the tendency of being diagnosed with DID of those victims is correlated. Both men and women showed similar types of identities and behavior that leads to the conclusion that crimes can be done by anybody regardless of their sex ( O’Boyle, 1993 ). Therefore, the framework of how to justify or punish the person who committed wrongdoings should be the same for both male and female.

Many psychiatrists tend to question whether the person is really suffering from DID or trying to pretend in order to have NGRI-DID. However, involving only one specialist might not be enough as we all are human beings and think subjectively based on our past experience and beliefs. The case of Thomas Huskey was advised by the psychiatrist that already had strong beliefs that the murderer is just a great actor, therefore, he did not attempt to search for the root cause of the behavior that was hard to explain at that time ( Haliman, 2015 ). Moreover, involving a few professionals is no longer enough since the opinion can differ based on individual observation, however, even the final judgment can be affected by groupthink. Based on the case of Ms. Moore, it was easier to find her guilty since both identities were directly involved in the action, so even the presence of other minor identities would not justify her wrongdoings. In particular, she was not even diagnosed with DID during the trial and was found responsible regardless of her mental illness ( Moore, 1988 ).

Regarding the doubts over the reliability of measures for the assessment of DID, there are so far very few mechanisms available to psychiatrists that can be used in an attempt to evaluate patient’s dissociative disorders. It has been found that the long interviews used during the evaluation allow for emerging of different identities present within an individual. The long aspect of the interviews and evaluation also reduce the possibility of patient malingering the diagnosis. Kluft (1999) stated that “simulated DID presents crude manifestations of the disorder, such as stereotypical good/bad identity states and a preoccupation with the circumstances individual hopes to avoid by obtaining an DID diagnosis.” Kluft also suggested that it is difficult for the individual to maintain the voice, set of body gestures, and memory for every personality that he or she is trying to simulate. Hence, it can be suggested that the actual possibility of malingering DID is extremely challenging, and that cases of malingered DID will be very rare compared to correctly diagnosed DID.

Speaking of suggesting the framework for deciding on person’s liability on the basis of DID, the diagnosis has proven itself to be so complex that no universal method can actually be applied. However, there is a set of actions that should be done in order to assess the responsibility for the crime committed. Initially, an evaluation of the patient should be performed by several independent psychiatrists. The DID in our opinion should only be considered valid when all the psychiatrists involved agree on the opinion that the defendant is suffering from DID. Based on the diagnosis, the question of competency to stand trial must be answered. Then, the court should select the appropriate method for assessing the responsibility. The “host-alter” method is best when there is a dominant personality present, and the crime was committed by the alter identity. The “alter-in-control” method should be used when there is no clear evidence of the dominant identity. If the method used provides a result that supports the fact that the identity evaluated is insane at the time of committing a crime, the defendant should be considered not guilty.

Limitations

The paper does carry certain limitations. The main limitation lies in the fact that no primary sources of data were used. The nature of literature review exempts researchers from direct interaction with the patients. This is even true for the previous research that our paper is based on. The existing literature primary deals with evaluating the cases that have already happened, and not evaluating the currently open cases. It brings us to the need to believe the judgments of previous psychiatrists involved in the cases, not being able to actually see the patients and whether or not the researchers would agree on the diagnosis and the responsibility with the psychiatrists involved. The suggestion for future research that arises from this limitation is to attempt to conduct the study that would be based on the primary data by conducting interviews with specialists and patients involved or conducting observations. Case study method could be suggested.

Secondly, the paper primary deals with the cases from the Western region. It raises the question of the ability to generalize the results to the other region, as different cultures have different approaches toward legal judgments. It would hence be interesting to see the results of similar studies in the Asian and Eastern regions to compare whether these regions possess the similar views on the topic of multiple personality disorder. The future research on the above-mentioned areas of the world will therefore be of importance and value to the field of literature currently available.

Recommendations

The research has identified few critical areas in the field of DID that have not yet been addressed by the previous research and are also not addressed by our research. Previous research has either involved case studies of non-criminal DID patients, or analysis of criminal DID patients that was done after the trials have been concluded. However, it is of great importance to conduct the study that would examine the criminal DID patients while trials and evaluations are still ongoing. Such study would tackle the limitations present in our paper, as well as ones from previous research.

Future researchers are also encouraged to compare the courts’ views on DID with other disorders, similarly to our paper’s comparison of DID to epileptic seizures. Such studies are of interest to the field of psychology, as they may change the opinions on the diagnosis from the law enforcement agencies, if they see that similar disorders are treated differently, just like DID and epileptic seizures. Moreover, the research paper was focused on the cases that happened in the West and under its legal environment. The further research is suggested to look at the wider aspect of countries and nationalities, however, the availability of secondary source data as of now is really limited.

Dissociative identity disorder is a complex and controversial disorder which has seen opposing opinions on the existence of the disorder itself and concepts associated with it, such as the legal responsibility of the defendants suffering (or appearing to suffer) from multiple personality disorder.

The paper has examined the existing literature on the topic of multiple personality disorder and has found a general courts’ tendency to not accept DID as a reason to justify the defendant’s insanity and hence not to exempt the person from the legal responsibility. In part, such tendency is explained by the negative social reaction to the cases where defendants were found not guilty by the reason of insanity (see Milligan’s case). Another explanation for the tendency is the controversial and subjective nature of DID and differences in the opinions held by psychiatrists when evaluating a person on whether DID diagnosis could be given.

Based on the existing literature, the paper has suggested the basis for the framework on which the legal systems can standardize their approach toward DID. It has to be noted, however, that the framework still cannot be made universal, because the symptoms and traits existing differ from one patient to another (for example, the existence of the dominant personality). The induction of hypnosis during the course of treatment makes the issue even more complex, as we have seen from the case of Eve, where Eve White was a dominant personality until hypnosis sessions began and Eve Black learned to emerge at her will.

Based on the found secondary source data, the progress of developing the legal framework has improved when the awareness of DID keeps increasing, respectively. The courts tend to find DID criminals responsible for their actions due to the social factor and previous evidence. The approach of judgment is not related to the gender of the person since both male and female share the same types of identities. Even though the evaluation of DID is done by the psychological measures, the questions whether some people actually fake this disease keep appearing. Therefore, the involvement of the latest methods and a group of psychiatrists during the trial showed a positive effect on the final judgment.

Author Contributions

SK: conceptualization and supervision. SK and NB: data curation and writing – original draft. SK, NB, and EP: methodology and writing – review and editing. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher’s Note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Oslo Metropolitan University provided the fund for covering the open access publication fees.

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5 Shocking Dissociative Identity Disorder Cases That Will Make You Think

• Post author: Janey Davies, B.A. (Hons)
• Post published: March 10, 2019
• Reading time: 7 mins read
• Post category: Personality / Psychology & Mental Health

For decades, researchers have focused on the psychological difficulties that present in dissociative identity disorder cases. But now they are realising there is another issue.

Typically, we associate dissociative identity disorder cases with multiple personalities or split personalities. So from the very start, we are exploring what’s happening with the identity or personality. As a result, previous studies have tended to look at the changing character traits of the person.

But things have changed. Now researchers know that people who suffer from this disorder can also undergo remarkable physical changes . And this is where it gets interesting. Because understanding how our minds can change our body could help in other medical areas.

Early Scientific Dissociative Identity Disorder Cases

Early scientific studies on dissociative identity disorder cases were pretty rudimentary. Dr. Morton Prince , a neurologist in the early 20 th century, studied the galvanic skin’s response during multiple personality episodes. But later research showed that there were other, more advanced physical symptoms .

Patients reported a range of different symptoms, including:

• heart palpitations
• gastrointestinal problems
• changes in menstruation
• sexual dysfunction
• handwriting

Researchers were able to record variations in brain wave activity, respiratory and cardiac activity, blood flow to the brain and more. It seemed incredible. In the past, the general consensus was that people with dissociative identity disorders were somehow malingering or fabricating their symptoms. Now there was real proof of a serious medical condition. So how is this even possible ?

Dr. Frank Putnam is a psychiatrist and works at the Laboratory of Developmental Psychology at the National Institute of Health. He thinks it is easier to understand how the mind can influence the body if we look at ourselves in two parts. We have a ‘biological self’ and a ‘psychological self’ . So when one switches, so does the other.

“We have a work self and a play self, for instance, but we are the same person. But each of those selves has its own repertoire of emotional states, memories and, to some extent, an underlying biological pattern. Those minor differences are seen in their extremes in the patients with multiple personalities.”

So when a person with dissociative identity disorder switches personality, they will also change biologically. Furthermore, these changes can be enormous.

“A given state of consciousness has its biological reality. Keeping these states separate and distinct, the patients create biologically separate selves.” Dr. Putnam

5 Examples of Dissociative Identity Disorder Cases

In one interesting case, a young man with dissociative identity disorder has no allergic symptoms drinking orange juice when he is his true self . But it appears that his other personalities are allergic. As such, when they take over, he experiences hives.

Stranger still is that if he drinks the juice as himself but a personality appears whilst it is being digested, the hives will still appear. Even more strange is that if he drinks the juice as another personality and has an allergic reaction, but then comes back as himself, the hives disappear.

One study examined a woman with an undiagnosed rash on her skin. This woman was admitted to hospital with an inexplicable rash on her left arm and was found to suffer from multiple personalities. Medical staff discovered that during the night, one of these personalities had been placing poison ivy on her left arm with her gloved right hand.  This caused the rash.

She had no knowledge of these nightly excursions. However, when access was restricted to the plant, lesions appeared on the left arm as usual. Dissociative identity disorder cases like these are helpful. This is because they diagnose patients with this disorder in the first instance when they might present with another condition.

This study examined the extraordinary ability of a blind woman who regained her sight. A 37-year-old blind German woman was able to see, but only when her personality switched to a teenage boy .

‘B.T’ suffered an accident at a young age which left her with damage to the visual processing area of the brain. This means her eyes function normally, but her brain cannot process the information it receives.

However, during a therapy session to help her cope with her dissociative identity disorder, BT suddenly regained her sight. As she switched between personalities, her vision also switched on and off like a light. BT managed to regain her sight in all of two of her personalities after months of therapy.

A family had forced a woman to be present as they executed her boyfriend. As a result of this terrible trauma , she developed a dissociative identity disorder. The woman was dark-skinned with brown hair and brown eyes.

During a therapy session, she experienced a particularly disturbing flashback of the event. She questioned whether she could ever live a normal life again and turned to the therapist. Her eyes had changed from a deep brown to a bright blue . They remained that colour for about 10 seconds before changing back to brown.

Handwriting

Changes in handwriting are amongst one of the most common symptoms of physical changes in dissociative identity disorder cases. In fact, studies show that 37% of patients with the disorder report changes to their handwriting style.

Not only that, but when examined by forensic handwriting experts, analysis revealing striking differences between samples provided when switching between personalities . In fact, changes in handwriting are now such an indicator of dissociative identity disorder cases that experts are using it to diagnose patients.

This is because handwriting samples from the broader general public tend to convey a wider range of emotions and experiences. By contrast, samples from those with multiple personalities often reveal specific memories and emotions. And this can be helpful, not only in the diagnosis but in the treatment as well.

“They can teach us much about the mechanisms by which we shift from one state of consciousness to another,” Dr. Putnam said. ”Most of psychiatry deals with helping people shift from one unpleasant state to another, more pleasant one.”

What Research into Dissociative Identity Disorder Cases Can Show Us

These dissociative identity disorder cases show us the incredible power our minds have over our bodies . This demonstrates just how dramatic the changes can be if we can harness this extraordinary power in the right way.

Researchers believe that the key to better health is a move away from pharmaceuticals and using the power of our own bodies to heal . If we look at dissociative identity disorder cases, we can not only help those who suffer from multiple personalities but a wider population as well.

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Split Decisions in the Courtroom

The three legal faces of dissociative identity disorder..

Posted March 2, 2017

Dissociative identity disorder is a myth.

No, it’s a real mental illness.

No, it’s a metaphor for genuine pain and suffering, shaped by a therapist or the media.

What are we supposed to believe? The newly released movie, Split , with its unrealistic, sensationalized picture of Dissociative Identity Disorder , makes you wonder how much progress we’ve made in understanding — or at least portraying — mental illness. When it comes to DID, though, the controversy isn’t just on the silver screen; multiple perspectives have swirled around multiple personality disorder — now renamed dissociative identity disorder — ever since it appeared in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual III in the 1980s.

When it comes to deciding what’s fake and what’s real, there is no place where the stakes are higher than in the courtroom; in 2016 alone, Dissociative Identity Disorder was offered as a defense in a child pornography case , by a mother accused of drowning her 2-year-old, and in the murder of a prostitute . Let’s take a look at the three “faces” of Dissociative Identity Disorder in the courtroom and the role a forensic psychologist plays in integrating them.

Billy Milligan: The “Successful” MPD

In 1978, 23-year-old Billy Milligan was arrested and charged with kidnapping, robbing, and raping three women close to Ohio State University. The first sign of Milligan's alter personalities appeared in the patrol car just after his arrest. The policeman who transferred him later remarked that he "couldn't tell.. what was going on, but it was like (he) was talking to different people at different times." One of the rape victims told an investigator that the rapist had a German accent, though Milligan was born and raised in the United States; another said he had been so nice that, in different circumstances, she might have considered dating him. During his trial, defense attorneys were able to show a documented history of “entering trances” and “wandering” dating back to junior high school and his self-reports of severe abuse by his stepfather, while not objectively documented, were backed up by his mother and siblings.

Mr. Milligan successfully pled not guilty by reason of insanity after two of his 10 alters, including a Yugoslavian con artist and a 19-year-old lesbian, came forward to take the blame. He was the first person to successfully use what was then called multiple personality disorder as an insanity defense. His case was also unique in that the verdict, rendered by a judge after the defendant waived the right to a jury trial, was uncontested by the prosecution. Mr. Milligan ultimately spent 11 years in a forensic psychiatric institution as was paroled after he was believed to be integrated.

Tom Bonney: A Case of Therapist-Induced Disorder?

Tom Bonney , on the other hand, certainly had mental health issues (mood swings, anger management problems) before he shot his 19-year-old daughter 27 times in November 1987. However, from all accounts, no one had ever used Mr. Bonney and multiple personality disorder in the same sentence until Dr. Paul Dell hypnotized the defendant and discovered 10 personalities, including an alter, Damien, who had allegedly committed the murder. The trauma that Dr. Dell cited as splintering Mr. Bonney’s personality was the death of his grandmother at age 10.

However, there were some problems with this diagnosis. First of all, after denying any involvement in his daughter’s death for weeks, Mr. Bonney had confessed to reporters shortly after his arrest; "It was just temporary insanity; somebody going over the edge," Bonney said. "I was depressed . My daughter was seeing a married man who had a baby."

Second, and particularly troublesome, Dr. Dell’s credibility as an unbiased evaluator of Mr. Bonney’s mental state was severely challenged on the witness stand. Dr. Dell reportedly had “diagnosed” Mr. Bonney before ever meeting him, based on newspaper reports of Mr. Bonney’s self-reported vague amnesia form some of the details of the crime and Dr. Dell’s firm belief that multiple personality disorder was not only under-diagnosed, but as natural a response to trauma as blood clotting is to a person who’s cut his finger while slicing a bagel. A self-described expert in multiple personality disorder, Dr. Dell contacted Mr. Bonney’s defense attorney and offered his services in evaluating the defendant for MPD.

On the witness stand, however, the clinical psychiatrist who had been instrumental involved in writing the official diagnosis of MPD for the APA’s manual on mental disorders, was highly critical of Dr. Dell’s diagnosis. Dr. Philip Coons testified that, after viewing 13 hours of videotaped interviews between Dr. Dell and Mr. Bonney, the psychologist asked leading questions, did not conduct a comprehensive interview before jumping into hypnosis , and improperly suggested that Mr. Bonney had other personalities and that, if he did, he might be committed to a hospital instead of a prison. Mr. Bonney was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.

Ken Bianchi: Faking “Mad”

The moral of this story is that mental illness can be faked, experts can be fooled, and a forensic evaluator must operate differently than a clinician. Kenneth Bianchi , along with his cousin Angelo Bueno, was one half of the Hillside Strangler duo, who raped, tortured and murdered 10 Los Angeles women between October 1977 and February 1978; he later killed two women on his own in Washington State. After his arrest for the Washington murders, Bianchi provided a series of alibis that could not be substantiated; he also attempted to coerce his mother into typing up and mailing an anonymous confession (she refused) and convinced a female friend to lie and say he was with her at the time of the murders (she did but was not believed and later recanted).

In spite of this, Bianchi managed to convince four psychiatrists that it was his alter, “Steve Walker” who was really responsible for the murders; this occurred after he was allegedly hypnotized by one of the experts, who then requested to speak to “another part of Ken.”

The prosecution hired Dr. Martin Orne to examine Bianchi. In the meantime, detectives had discovered that "Steve Walker" was the name of a college student from whom Bianchi had stolen transcripts to set up a fraudulent psychiatric practice, had seen the movie Sybil shortly before his evaluation, and had read numerous psychology books, including a book on the classic MPD case, The Three Faces of Eve. Dr. Orne, an expert on hypnosis, was able to show that Bianchi was faking his hypnotic state and was molding his behavior to fit the diagnosis; for example, after suggesting to Bianchi that most "multiples" have more than two personalities, “Billy” emerged.

Under pressure he admitted to the deception and struck a plea deal. In fact, in a 2015 interview , he described his videotaped multiple personalities as “hypnosis-induced caricatures seemingly mimicking actress Joanne Woodward’s portrayal of “Eve” in the Three Faces of Eve film.”

The Bottom Line

The release of the movie Split has brought new attention to what has become an increasingly rare strategy in an already-rare insanity defense. One reason may be that, since the 1980s, dissociative personality disorder in an insanity plea has rarely been successful as more jurors have assert that, unless an alter was obviously psychotic or delusional, she or he is still responsible for what happened.

From a legal perspective, new research offers both clarity and confusion; a 2016 study offered support for the argument that DID develops after severe trauma (as opposed to a therapist's suggestion) while other research calls into question whether or not one personality can have complete amnesia for what another personality has done. No one wins when a faker gets off or when a truly insane person is convicted; forensic psychologists can best shed some light by researching what the defendant's life was like prior to his arrest and by understanding what genuine DID should look like in a legal context and what it should not.

Joni E. Johnston , Psy.D , is a clinical/forensic psychologist, private investigator, author, and host of the YouTube channel and podcast "Unmasking a Murderer."

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