Creating Hysteria: Women and Multiple Personality Disorder

From 1985 to 1995 an estimated 40,000 Americans, most of themwomen, were told they suffered from multiple personality disorder.Feminists, fundamentalists, and a substantial portion of the mentalhealth community Andorsed this Sybil-ing of America.Sensation-seeking television talk shows took up the MPD rallyingcry. In Creating Hysteria, Joan Acocella tells a riveting tale oftherapists betraying their patients, of a psychotherapy professionat war within its own ranks, and finally of expatients rising upand putting an And to the MPD scandal.

Creating Hysteria exposes one of the most frightening mentalrollercoaster rides taken by thousands of people in modern times.Joan Acocella brilliantly illuminates how the mental healthprofession spearheaded, perhaps inadvertently, a fin-de-sieclehysteria, the fallout from which will take us into the nextmillennium. Anyone who has ever been interested in mental healthshould read this book.--Elizabeth Loftus, president, AmericanPsychological Society

Author: Joan Acocella
Publisher: Jossey-Bass
Published: 09/02/1999
Pages: 228
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.92lbs
Size: 9.34h x 6.28w x 0.82d
ISBN: 9780787947941

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 08/09/1999 pg. 331
Booklist 09/15/1999 pg. 207
Library Journal 10/01/1999 pg. 116
New York Times 11/21/1999 pg. 82
New Yorker (The) 12/20/1999 pg. 99
Publishers Weekly 08/16/1999

About the Author
JOAN ACOCELLA coauthored the textbook Abnormal Psychology: Current Perspectives, now in its eighth edition. A staff writer for The New Yorker, she is the author of Mark Morris (1993) and the editor of The Diary of Vaslav Nijinsky (1999).