![]() Louis was physically abused and neglected as a child and had frequent “attacks of hysteria.” One such attack occurred when he was 17 and bitten by a snake. The first person to be officially diagnosed with multiple personality disorder (instead of double personality disorder as had eventually come into use in France) was Louis Auguste Vivet in 1882. Hysteria was seen as primarily dissociative in nature and could involve disturbances of memory, consciousness, affect, identity, and body functions (van der Hart, Lierens, Goodwin, 1996), 1 the same symptoms today associated with dissociative disorders and particularly with dissociative identity disorder. After such a view was no longer acceptable, those with DID were seen as hysterics. 1ĭID has a history of being mistaken for possession. Her parents had also shown signs of dissociation and had been rumored to be possessed, and one of the “angels” was frozen at age 9, the same age at which Sister Benedetta's father had died, her symptoms had become uncontrollable, and she had been sent to the convent (van der Hart, Lierens, Goodwin, 1996). Like Jeanne Fery, Sister Benedetta suffered from self harm and disordered eating. Benedetta had amnesia for some of their actions, including a sexual relationship that they had initiated. When they took control of her body, each would speak with a different dialect and tone of voice while using different facial expressions. 1įollowing Jeanne Fery in 1623 was Sister Benedetta, a woman who was supposedly possessed by three angelic boys who would beat her to cause chronic pain. Jeanne Fery was actually called ”the most perfect case” of “dédoublement de la personnalité,” the most perfect case of DID, by Bourneville, the man who reissued a book about her life in 1886 (van der Hart, Lierens, Goodwin, 1996). The alters resulted from childhood physical and possibly sexual abuse. Her alters were associated with actions that ranged from helping her to heal to self harm and disordered eating, were audible inside her head, and could take control of her body to allow for various actions, conversion features, and changes in knowledge and skills. She had multiple alters, each with their own name, identity, and identifying features and had alters that would today be described as an ISH, persecutory protectors, and child alters. Though not labeled such at the time, Jeanne Fery recorded her exorcism in detail (with additional details provided in the records of her exorcists), preserving documentation of symptoms that exactly match those that are found in individuals with DID today. The first documented case of dissociative identity disorder (DID) was in 1584.
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