First Person Plural: Multiple Personality and the Philosophy of Mind / Edition 2

by Stephen E. Braude

Overview

Do people with multiple personalities have more than one self? The first full-length philosophical study of multiple personality disorder, First Person Plural maintains that even the deeply divided multiple personality contains an underlying psychological unity. Braude updates his work in this revised edition to discuss recent empirical and conceptual developments, including the charge that clinicians induce false memories in their patients, and the professional redefinition of "multiple personality disorder" as "dissociative identity disorder."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780847679966
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	02/21/1995
Edition description:	Revised Edition
Pages:	330
Product dimensions:	5.82(w) x 8.98(h) x 0.69(d)

About the Author

Stephen E. Braude is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	x
	Introduction	1
1	A Brief History of Hypnosis	8
1.1	Introduction	8
1.2	Animal magnetism	9
1.3	The Nancy School	15
1.4	Charcot and the Salpetriere School	18
1.5	Hypnotic anesthesia	19
1.6	Hypnosis and secondary consciousness	24
1.7	Further experiments in hypnosis	29
1.8	Remarks on automatic writing	34
2	Multiple Personality Disorder: A Survey of the Evidence	37
2.1	Introduction	37
2.2	A general sketch of MPD	39
2.3	Cognitive, sensory, and physiological differences between alters	48
2.4	Further aspects of multiplicity	50
2.5	Personalities and 'primary' personalities	56
2.6	Is multiple personality artifiactual?	61
3	The Nature of Multiplicity	66
3.1	Introduction	66
3.2	The distinctness of alternate personalities	67
3.3	The sense of self	70
3.4	Apperceptive centers	77
3.5	Some potential difficulties	83
3.6	Conclusion	87
4	The Concept of Dissociation	93
4.1	Introduction	93
4.2	Basic assumptions	94
4.3	Morton Prince and co-consciousness	106
4.4	Suppression, repression, and the unconscious	112
4.5	How not to define 'dissociation'	116
4.6	Conclusion	120
5	The Principle of Compositional Reversibility	123
5.1	Introduction	123
5.2	Varieties of reversibility	124
5.3	An appeal to psychological primitives	129
5.4	Anomalous multiplicity	132
5.5	The significance of dissociation	135
5.6	Postscript: commissurotomy	136
6	Multiple Subjects or Multiple Functions?	139
6.1	Introduction	139
6.2	Plato's argument	140
6.3	The law of non-contradiction	144
6.4	Psychological indeterminacy	151
6.5	The utility of intentional parts	156
6.6	A Freudian variation	159
7	The Unity Beneath Multiplicity	164
7.1	Introduction	164
7.2	Two types of unity	165
7.3	The indispensibility of synthetic unity	170
7.4	Making sense of abilities	180
7.5	Multiplicity within unity	187
8	Persons and Personalities	191
8.1	Introduction	191
8.2	Persons as organisms	193
8.3	Persons as mere agents or subjects	199
8.4	The challenge of MPD	206
8.5	The concept of a personality	212
8.6	Critical reflections on the clinical literature	214
9	Multiple personality and Mediumship	218
9.1	Introduction	218
9.2	The dissociation hypothesis	223
9.3	The survival hypothesis	230
9.4	The intrusion hypothesis	241
9.5	Conclusion	246
10	Update and Afterthoughts	248
10.1	Introduction	248
10.2	Dissociative Identity Disorder	248
10.3	The 'false memory' debate	253
10.4	The recorder view of memory	256
10.5	The appeal to repression	261
10.6	Additional skeptical errors	264
	Notes	269
	Bibliography	278
	Index	310
	About the Author	317

Editorial Reviews

A valuable addition to the growing body of new philosophical literature on descriptive psychopathology.

The British Journal of Psychiatry

Illuminating, deftly and clearly written, and richly thought-provoking.. .. It breaks new ground in philosophy.

Journal Of The American Society For Psychical Research

A valuable addition to the growing body of new philosophical literature on descriptive psychopathology.--The British Journal of Psychiatry

Illuminating, deftly and clearly written, and richly thought-provoking. . . . It breaks new ground in philosophy.--Journal Of The American Society For Psychical Research

From the Publisher

A valuable addition to the growing body of new philosophical literature on descriptive psychopathology.

British Journal of Psychiatry

A valuable addition to the growing body of new philosophical literature on descriptive psychopathology.

British Journal Of Psychiatry