Multiple Personality Disorder and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

Similarities and Differences
  • Bennett G. Braun
Chapter
Part of the The Plenum Series on Stress and Coping book series (SSSO)

Abstract

Multiple personality disorder (MPD) and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) were formulated in medical consciousness at about the same time that modern psychiatry was being molded by its Age of Giants. During this period of 1880 to 1920, MPD was pulled from its millennia-old identification with demonology and possession into the rational spheres of psychology (Ellenberger, 1970). The “cowardice” of warriors who relived scenes of terror in sweating nightmares acquired a new etiology in the trenches of World War I, namely, “shell shock,” later to become the “combat fatigue” of World War II, and the PTSD of today. All too often throughout history the MPD and PTSD patient shared similar fates: isolation or death for the “possessed,” rejection or execution for the craven. Until recently, however, it was not realized that MPD and PTSD had two similarities in etiology and phemonenology: origin in exposure of the victim to shattering psychological trauma—in childhood in the instance of MPD, in later life in PTSD—and the subsequent need for the person to dissociate as a coping mechanism.

Keywords

Child Abuse Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Borderline Personality Disorder Psychiatric Clinic Ptsd Patient 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media New York 1993

Authors and Affiliations

  • Bennett G. Braun
    • 1
  1. 1.Center on Psychiatric Trauma and DissociationRush Institute of Mental Well-Being Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical CenterChicagoUSA

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