A Brief History of Multiplicity.- The Roots of Multiple Personality Disorder/Dissociative Identity Disorder.- "Nothing but God and the Brain".- Prying Open the Lid.- Looking Inside the Box, Thinking Outside the Box.- Sybil A Case of Multiple Personalities and the Natural History of a Myth.- The Case of Sybil.- The Publication of a "Psychiatric Masterpiece".- The Myth Explodes.- Seminal Cases of Multiplicity A History.- Fourteen Seminal Cases.- Bifurcation of Self.

This book uses case history methodology to illustrate the relationship between theory and practice of the study of Dissociation Identity Disorder (DID). Challenging conventional wisdom on all sides, the book traces the clinical and social history of dissociation in a provocative examination of this widely debated phenomenon. It reviews the current state of DID-related controversy so that readers may draw their own conclusions and examines the evolution of hypnosis and the ways it has been used and misused in the treatment of cases with DID. The book is rigorously illustrated with two centuries' worth of famous cases.