The Myth of Multiple Personalities and Satanic Cults

Abstract

This chapter traces the rise of the modern epidemic of multiple personality disorder (MPD), which commenced with the publication of The Three Faces of Eve in 1957 but really took off after the 1973 publication of Sybil. In 1980, the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders added MPD as a bona fide diagnosis. It has now been renamed Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). The theory behind the modern MPD phenomenon holds that people develop alternate internal personalities to deal with severe childhood trauma, so that the “core” personality has no awareness of the trauma or the alters. MPD/DID is probably an iatrogenic illness created unwittingly by the therapist, or in some instances self-created through cultural influences. In this chapter, we see how this theory destroyed lives and created latter-day “snake pits” in dissociative disorder units, where many patients came to believe that they had killed, eaten, or borne babies in mythical satanic ritual abuse cults.