Fact or Fiction? Dissociative Identity Disorder, Narrative, and the Agency Afforded by Integration

Naomi Rokotnitz

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Chapter 8 Fact or Fiction? Dissociative Identity Disorder, Narrative, and the Agency Afforded by Integration

In: The Cultural Heritage of Psychiatry and Its Literary Transformations

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Naomi Rokotnitz

Naomi Rokotnitz
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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 162–190

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004745247_010

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Abstract

This chapter examines the charged debates around Dissociative Identity Disorder (previously known as Multiple Personality Disorder) and their intersections with a ‘constructivist’ approach to human emotions and self-identity. By tracing how diagnostic narratives not only describe but also shape patients’ interpretations of their symptoms and even the production of these symptoms, as well as their reverberating cultural representations, I elucidate how the history of this controversial psychopathology sheds light on the very notion of selfhood. I thus contribute to current conceptions of ‘self’, of ‘self-illness ambiguity’ and its role in psychiatric treatment, and the crucial role played by narrative practices in the dynamic formation of any human identity.¹

My focus-text for this investigation is Sybil: The Classic True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Personalities (1973), which was presented to readers as the novelised case-study of a patient pseudonymised as Sybil, and tells of a child “violated, abused, deprived of a normal childhood, and thus driven into psychoneurosis for the most paradoxical reason – to survive” (Sybil 244). The book sold over six million copies in the Unites States and went on to become an international bestseller and a TV blockbuster, impacting in crucial ways both clinicians’ and patients’ (mis)understanding of DID and of the embodiment of psychological processes – before it was exposed as being largely fictitious. The repercussions of this elaborate deception continue to be profound. Through examining Sybil and its influence upon mental health care, alongside current medical literature, this chapter (1) explores the cultural and medical consequences of this case; (2) assesses scientific evidence for DID, Functional Motor Sensory Symptoms (FMSS), and predictive processing; and (3) suggests implications for current notions of personhood and of agency in phenomenology, in philosophy, and in psychiatry.

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The Cultural Heritage of Psychiatry and Its Literary Transformations

Middle Ages to the Present

Series: Narratives and Mental Health, Volume: 4

Cover The Cultural Heritage of Psychiatry and Its Literary Transformations

E-Book ISBN:: 9789004745247

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 13 Nov 2025

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Chapter 8 Fact or Fiction? Dissociative Identity Disorder, Narrative, and the Agency Afforded by Integration

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The Cultural Heritage of Psychiatry and Its Literary Transformations

Middle Ages to the Present

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