Before 1900

Most written accounts are fairly short, and many attribute behaviors or alter Personalities to a form of religious possession, or link mental illness with belief in demons.
However some longer accounts were published by “physicians” and some historians found other accounts.

Many ordinary people couldn’t read and books were expensive rather than today’s mass-produced paperbacks and ebooks about DID.

An incomplete list of some of the historical cases of dissociative identity disorder…

• 1580s: Jeanne Fery: A sixteenth-century case of dissociative identity disorder – van der Hart, Lierens and Goodwin (1997)

1700-1799

• 1790 – 1952: Multiple personality before “Eve” – Adam Crabtree (1993), a short summary of the psychology of the times and recognition of DID
• 1790: a woman from Stuttgart described by Eberhard Gmelin speaks different languages depending on which personality is in control at the time

1800-1849

• 1802: Three cases described by Dwight who publishes them in 1818, with one likely to be multiple personality disorder and the others likely to be dissociative amnesia or fugue (Hacking, 1991), Dwight describes a female with “two souls, each occasionally dormant and occasionally active, and utterly ignorant of what the other was doing”
• 1815-1875 Double consciousness in Britain 1815-1875 described by skeptical historian Ian Hacking (1991)
• 1816: Mary Reynolds is described by Mitchill, and later by M. Kenny (1986)
• 1823: Dewar published the first case of a teenager with DID, a 16 year-old Scottish girl
• 1823 to early 1900s – Adolescent MPD in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries – Elizabeth Bowman (1990)
• 1834: “Estelle” is treated by Charles Antoine Despine (also described by Catherine Fine, 1988)

1840-1869

• 1845: Mayo describes an 18 year-old English girl with two personalities, “misconduct in her relatives ” is mentioned
• 1846: Ward refers to other boys with “double consciousness” whose “nervous system has been weakened by excess, terror or cerebral excitement” which Hacking believes suggests trauma
• 1860: Mary Reynolds is described by Plumber

1870-1899

• 1876: “Félida X” is described by Eugène Azam as “double personality” or ”doublement de la vie”
• 1876: “double consciousness” is now referred to as “double personality” according to Hacking (1991)
• 1887: Barret describes a 17 year-old English boy with two personalities of different ages , with different handwriting. Barret attributes the symptoms with the stress of applying for a scholarship to Cambridge University – his symptoms delay his admission to Cambridge.
• 1880s: Louis Vivé/Vivet in France – originally described by Bourru and Burot in 1885, 1886, 1887, and in Variatons de la personnalité (1888/95); Camuset in 1882; Mabille and Ramadier in 1886; and Voisin in 1885 and 1887.
  The 19th century DID case of Louis Vivet: New Findings and Re-evaluation (1995/1997) – Henri Faure, John Kersten, Dinet Koopman and Onno van der Hart
• 1887: Pierre Janet describes “dissociation” as demonstrates that some people have multiple “psychic centers” that he describes as multiple “personalities”, rather than dual or alternating states
• 1881: Ansel Bourne is described as having dissociative fugue episodes
• 1894: Mollie Fancher becomes known as the “Brooklyn Enigma”, described by Dailey 1894.
  The Fasting Girl: A True Victorian Medical Mystery – Michelle Stacey – A much newer and confusing account of the story of Fancher including hysteria/hysterical paralysis and the fame surrounding people claiming to not need to eat in Victorian times
• 1899: Theodore Hyslop describes different types of “double consciousness”

1900 – 1919

• 1900: Ottolenghi, an Italian , refers to ”sdoppiamenti el le transformazioni della personalitá”
• 1901: Miss Beauchamp (Clara Norton Fowler) is described by Morton Prince as having multiple personalities
• 1905: Prince publishes the book ”The Dissociation of a Personality’‘ about “Miss Beauchamp” describing three personalities
• 1905: “Hanna” is described by Boris Sidis as developing a second personality after a head injury, they eventually merge
• 1906: Burnett describes a 16 year-old American boy who has had problems since early childhood. He He attributes the different personalities to epilepsy.
• 1906: Gordon reports a 19 year-old American with two personalities and a third state who struggle over control of the body. Gordon describes the boys “delusion belief” about having two ego states and calls it “epileptic psychosis”. Problems continue for at least 9 years despite epilepsy medication.
• 1909: My life as a dissociated personality by B.C.A. – Morton Prince persuaded Clara Norton Fowler and her alters to write this
• 1915-1917: After around 12 years of treatment Doris Fischer‘s five personalities are described by Walter F. Prince and Theodore Hyslop (1915), Hyslop (1917), and Walter F. Prince (1923). Together they publish over 2,000 pages about her symptoms and treatment. Doris links her violent, alcoholic father to developing different personalities and describes her mother encouraging her to dissociate.

1920-1940

These years are the aftermath of World War I.

• 1926: Bernice R. is described by Henry Herbert Goddard. Bernice describes incest which Goddard regards as a hallucination.

• 1926, 1927: A 19 year-old American woman “Norma” is described by Goddard with a four-year-old alter personality “Polly” and severe conversion disorder causing episodes of paralysis and mutism. Her history includes the deaths of her twin sister and three other siblings before age 11, paternal incest at age 14, the separation from her surviving siblings and emotional abuse by relatives, and the death of both parents by age 17. Goddard calls the incest a transference hallucination and believes her traumatic history has resulted in a daydream-like escape. The two personalities gradually merge.

1940 onwards

These years involve World War II, with further understanding of trauma and dissociative amnesia, the introduction of the American DSM psychiatric manual and the World Health Organization equivalent, and the impact of Vietnam war veterans leading to the creation of PTSD as a separate diagnosis.

See:

• Modern memoirs about DID
• Dissociative Identity Disorder information
• Alter personalities in Dissociative Identity Disorder and Other specified dissociative disorder
• Books on recovery and healing