Cult of Madness

Before 1980, MPD was considered one of the rarest of psychological illnesses. In the first half of the century, researchers found fewer than 100 cases that met their definition of MPD. Between 1985 and 1995, 40,000 cases were diagnosed.

The illness first came to the general public's attention in the 1950s with the release of the movie The Three Faces of Eve. Based on the true story of Chris Sizemore, Eve White was a shy housewife by day and Eve Black, a barhopping vixen, by night. Neither personality was aware of the other.

In the early 1970s, the book Sybil popularized the subject again. The best seller, which later became a TV movie, chronicled the life of a Columbia University art student who had been sadistically sexually abused by her mother. Sybil had 16 alters, two of whom had English accents and two of whom were boys. But years later, as the MPD movement began to spin out of control, a psychiatrist who treated her when her regular therapist was on vacation went public with the allegation that Sybil's alters were created by a combination of self-hypnosis and her therapist's leading questions.

The popularization of MPD coincided with the advent of another dubious movement -- recovered memories. In the early 1970s, therapists learned that childhood sexual abuse was much more prevalent than previously believed, though exact numbers were difficult to pin down, as was proving it in all but the most severe cases.

Feminists latched onto the issue of childhood molestation -- and the lack of serious attention society previously paid to it -- as further proof of the evil power of the patriarchal society. To help women overcome the damage of childhood molestation, a slew of self-help manuals and support groups sprung up guiding women on how to recover their long-lost memories.

The problem was that the majority of mental-health practitioners doubted that people actually forget significant episodes of trauma and abuse, much less unearth them intact decades later. "There is no credible scientific evidence proving the existence of a process called repression," according to the affidavit of Minnesota psychologist William Grove, an expert witness in Martha Hurt's case.

The theory that "neurologically intact victims of repeated, horrifying childhood abuse tend to 'repress' or 'dissociate' all memory of the abuse and can later recover 'memories' of such abuse with any degree of reliable accuracy has never...been accepted by the relevant scientific community," according to the affidavit of Richard Ofshe, a Stanford-educated social psychologist who specializes in coercion and techniques promoting changes in beliefs.

What credible scientific studies have shown is that molested and traumatized children tend not to forget abuse, but rather to suffer from repeated, unwanted, and painful intrusive thoughts and memories about the abuse, according to Grove. What has also been scientifically proven for decades is that hypnosis can create false memories.

Regardless, the MPD true believers took it as an article of faith that memories could be successfully repressed and recovered, and on this rather shaky foundation the theory of MPD took hold and flourished. That the protracted treatment of recovering and re-enacting memories and endlessly mapping alters was not backed by peer-reviewed, scientifically valid research did not faze MPD therapists. A large part of the public and profession considered psychotherapy more art than science anyway.

In 1980, a small group of interested therapists successfully lobbied the American Psychiatric Association to have MPD included as a primary-level diagnosis. In 1984, the MPD proponents formed an organization and launched their own scientific journal, Dissociation. Hundreds of hospitals opened special MPD units.

Colin Ross claimed that MPD occurred in 1 percent of the population, making it as common as schizophrenia. He predicted that once mental-health professionals saw the light, MPD would be understood as the root cause of most mental illnesses.

The movement was helped along by the media -- recovered memories of childhood abuse and multiple personalities became a staple of talk shows, TV newsmagazines, and newspaper lifestyle sections -- and by the sudden appearance of satanic ritual abuse, yet another improbable trend. In trying to discover the origin of the satanic cult phenomenon, experts again seized on the publication of a popular book, Michelle Remembers. Published in 1980, the book was written by a Canadian homemaker and her psychiatrist, who helped the woman recall being tortured at age 5 by a satanic cult.

Shortly after the book's publication, other women began reporting similar atrocities to their therapists. Clusters of parents around the country told police that satanic cults had horribly abused their children in day-care centers. So many people came forward claiming to have been victims of satanic cults that the FBI launched an investigation into more than 300 alleged crimes by organized cults. In 1993, the FBI announced that it found no corroborating evidence for any of the allegations.

To true believers, this was further proof that the government was in on the MPD conspiracy. Those mental-health experts who did speak out were branded anti-woman, anti-child, or a part of the cult conspiracy themselves.

Beginning in 1995, the MPD field began to retrench, no doubt because of the torrent of malpractice suits and multimillion-dollar settlements and the advent of managed care, which made a treatment requiring sometimes as many as 200 sessions a year financially infeasible.