Rewriting the Soul: Multiple Personality and the Sciences of Memory

Ian Hacking

Published by Princeton University Press 1995

Rewriting the Soul

Multiple Personality and the Sciences of Memory

Ian Hacking

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400821686

Overview
Contents

About this book

Twenty-five years ago one could list by name the tiny number of multiple personalities recorded in the history of Western medicine, but today hundreds of people receive treatment for dissociative disorders in every sizable town in North America. Clinicians, backed by a grassroots movement of patients and therapists, find child sexual abuse to be the primary cause of the illness, while critics accuse the "MPD" community of fostering false memories of childhood trauma. Here the distinguished philosopher Ian Hacking uses the MPD epidemic and its links with the contemporary concept of child abuse to scrutinize today's moral and political climate, especially our power struggles about memory and our efforts to cope with psychological injuries.

What is it like to suffer from multiple personality? Most diagnosed patients are women: why does gender matter? How does defining an illness affect the behavior of those who suffer from it? And, more generally, how do systems of knowledge about kinds of people interact with the people who are known about? Answering these and similar questions, Hacking explores the development of the modern multiple personality movement. He then turns to a fascinating series of historical vignettes about an earlier wave of multiples, people who were diagnosed as new ways of thinking about memory emerged, particularly in France, toward the end of the nineteenth century. Fervently occupied with the study of hypnotism, hysteria, sleepwalking, and fugue, scientists of this period aimed to take the soul away from the religious sphere. What better way to do this than to make memory a surrogate for the soul and then subject it to empirical investigation?

Made possible by these nineteenth-century developments, the current outbreak of dissociative disorders is embedded in new political settings. Rewriting the Soul concludes with a powerful analysis linking historical and contemporary material in a fresh contribution to the archaeology of knowledge. As Foucault once identified a politics that centers on the body and another that classifies and organizes the human population, Hacking has now provided a masterful description of the politics of memory : the scientizing of the soul and the wounds it can receive.

Author / Editor information

Ian Hacking is University Professor of Philosophy and a member of the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology at the University of Toronto. Among his numerous works are The Taming of Chance and Representing and Intervening.

Reviews

In this brilliant and provocative new book, Ian Hacking fixes his searching gaze on the hot topic of multiple personality. The results are remarkable.... In Hacking's hands, multiple personality emerges as a paradigmatic case study illuminating basic questions about truth, memory, fact and fiction, about knowledge, science, and identity.... [This book] treats these impossibly difficult problems of knowability in the human sciences with grace and wisdom.---Ellen Herman, Contemporary Psychology

Winner of the 1995 Pierre Janet Writing Award, International Society for the Study of Dissociation

The details of Hacking's discussion are enthralling and illuminating. He manages to avoid altogether the sensationalism usually associated with treatments of multiple personality, providing an informative history and raising deep and important philosophical issues.---Marya Schechtman, Mind

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	ix
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
CHAPTER 1. Is It Real? Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	8
CHAPTER 2. What Is It Like? Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	21
CHAPTER 3. The Movement Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	39
CHAPTER 4. Child Abuse Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	55
CHAPTER 5. Gender Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	69
CHAPTER 6. Cause Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	81
CHAPTER 7. Measure Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	96
CHAPTER 8. Truth in Memory Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	113
CHAPTER 9. Schizophrenia Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	128
CHAPTER 10. Before Memory Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	142
CHAPTER 11. Doubling of the Personality Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	159
CHAPTER 12. The Very First Multiple Personality Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	171
CHAPTER 13. Trauma Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	183
CHAPTER 14. The Sciences of Memory Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	198
CHAPTER 15. Memoro-Politics Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	210
CHAPTER 16. Mind and Body Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	221
CHAPTER 17. An Indeterminacy in the Past Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	234
CHAPTER 18. False Consciousness Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	258
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	269
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	297
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	329

(Deutsch)