Creating Hysteria: Women and Multiple Personality Disorder

Contrary to what Ms. Feruggia believes, Acocella *does* discuss how some disorders are culturally-oriented. See Chapt. 2 for example.I found this book to be compelling reading, and unlike some of the other reviewers, I felt she made a pretty strong case for her criticism of the psychiatric establishment's role in creating the whole MPD "epidemic."

This book shows how harmful recovered memory, MPD and satanic ritual abuse diagnoses can be to the client and how women make up the bulk of those diagnosed. It shows how too many practitioners see no need for outcome studies showing efficacy prior to widespread use of a modality of therapy, nor do they see the need to inform a client that a modality is controversial within the industry itself before commencing such therapies. This book, along with others are raising questions about inadequate training as to the new data on the workings of the brain/mind which is pouring into the world these days. It is appalling to me that old unfalsifiable theories originating with Freud, Janet and others still reign supreme in the training of so many psychiatrists and other MH therapists in this day and age. The book raises troubling questions in my mind of profit motive. It shows an attitude of too many in the industry of "anything goes as long as I decide it is therapeutic". That attitude can be dangerous to the client, and it implies an arrogance on the part of such therapists. I urge people interested in the mental health industry and the rights of clients to read this book and to give serious thought to the questions raised.

Three cheers for Joan Acocella, whose book "Creating Hysteria: Women and Multiple Personality Disorder" exposes MPD therapy for what it is: A family-wrecking therapy inflicted on vulnerable and suggestible clients. Especially revealing are the author's arguments that this bizarre phenomenon not only damages individuals and their families, but also threatens to undermine the women's rights movement and child protection services. In fact, this crisis has cast a destructive shadow over the entire field of psychotherapy.

Ms. Acocella provides a simple, short and highly readable summary of unscientific practices in psychotherapy which have destroyed thousands of (primarily) women and their extended families in psychotherapy worldwide. She avoids overly technical discussions and illustrates the junk science nature of repressed memory therapy and multiple personality disorder (now renamed disassociative identity disorder). Perhaps most damning to the psychotherapy profession she correctly points out the near absolute refusal of the professional organizations to take any substantial actions against the practitioners of this psuedo-science which is so destructive. Importantly, she uses the publications and actions of the practitioners of RMT to illustrate its fallacies.She is to be commended for having the moral courage to speak out against the unscientific practices. Practitioners of repressed memory therapy will probably try to punish her by reducing the use of her standard textbook on abnormal psychology. In my opinion, she deserves an award for her willingness to sacrifice herself and suffer the criticism of the practitioners of repressed memory therapy when most of her contemporaries have simply sat silent and let women and families continue to be destroyed. O that we had a thousand like her!

Having had a friend become a victim of the hysteria in Northbrook Illinois, caused by organizations such as ISSD, it is a welcome thing to have such books expose these organizations and methods employed by those organizations to create the hysteria that has damaged many innocent people.