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can’t!” When the screams subsided, a new personality took over. She was able to recall the
shocking event that lay at the bottom of the personality dissociation. At the age of six, Eve White
had been led by her mother to her grandmother’s coffin and been forced to place a goodbye kiss
on the dead face (Thigpen & Cleckley, 1954, 1957; Thigpen, 1961).
“Eve” has since revealed herself to be Chris Sizemore, a Fairfax, Virginia, homemaker. She has
manifested twenty-one different personalities over the past two decades. As new personalities
manifested, they did so in sets of three, each very different. Eve’s/Chris’s last split selves “died”
in 1974, leaving Chris ready to make it on her own (Sizemore & Pitillo, 1977).
The appearance of additional personalities after the “cure” of re-experiencing the event that
supposedly hastened the neurosis calls into question the claim of a cure. Some clinicians believe
that all cases of dissociative personality reflect the efforts of highly suggestible patients to please
their therapists. To develop a dissociative personality requires imaginative involvement with
fantasy, and such imagination is a good predictor of hypnotic suggestibility. These patients are
invariably responsive to hypnotherapy. The concern is that they may also be so suggestible as to
reconstruct their scripts to fit what they believe the therapist would like to hear.
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CHAPTER 15: PSYCHOLOGICAL DISORDERS
Digging for the Roots of Schizophrenia
It is estimated that one person out of 100 either has chronic schizophrenia, or has had one or
more acute episodes of schizophrenia. This rate of incidence seems to be fairly constant from
society to society and, it is believed by some, to have persisted over centuries.
Some types of schizophrenia provide the stereotype that people associate with “insanity,”
“madness,” or “lunacy.” Untreated schizophrenics can be unrestrained in their behavior,
discarding clothing, attacking others for no apparent reason, urinating and defecating in
inappropriate places, and masturbating in the presence of others. They may hear voices and have
delusions of grandeur and persecution. They may maintain a bizarre posture for hours or days.
They may speak in a language that cannot be understood (clang associations or “word-salad”), or
withdraw so completely that they go for long periods without speaking. Their emotional
responses can be grossly inappropriate: laughing at death and tragedy, and crying when good
fortune occurs.
The cause of schizophrenia is not known. Scientists may be getting closer to an answer, but if the
lesson of history is heeded, they will be cautious before claiming that the culprit has been
identified. Others have thought they had the answer to the riddle of schizophrenia only to have
their explanations disproved.
The first evidence of efforts to treat mental illness, probably schizophrenia, was actually an
archaeological find. Archaeologists found skulls with holes bored into them; an ancient “remedy”
for a variety if problems, called trephining, had been performed on these individuals. We do not
know what effect this treatment was supposed to have; some have speculated that it was to
relieve pressure or to allow the brain to cool off.
During the era of Greek dominance of the ancient world, physicians looked toward biological
causes of mental disorders. Hippocrates suggested that disorders resulted from an imbalance of
body fluids, and prescribed rest in tranquil surroundings and good food. This was an
enlightened view, inasmuch as the world at the time generally favored the idea of demonic
possession. After the fall of the Roman Empire and the onset of the Dark Ages, the idea of
demonic possession prevailed as the explanation for schizophrenia and other severe mental
disorders. Treatment was aimed at making the schizophrenic’s body a very uncomfortable place
for the demon to live. The patient was fed dreadful concoctions, chilled, and physically abused to
encourage the demon to depart the premises.
In the late Middle Ages and into the 17th century, the demonic possession explanation evolved
into witchcraft theory. An important difference between these views is that in demonic
possession the demon was believed to move in uninvited. In witchcraft, however, the demons
were supposedly invited in. Thousands of mentally ill people, probably primarily schizophrenics,
were tortured and killed in the 16th and 17th centuries. The idea that mental disorders
represented punishment by God or deliberate association with evil persists with some to this day.
We finally experienced a breakthrough in the treatment of schizophrenia in the late 1950s. It was
noted that a drug given to French soldiers in the Indochina War had a side effect of calming
severely wounded soldiers. The physician who noted this was instrumental in having the drug
tested to treat schizophrenia. It worked, dramatically reducing the symptoms of schizophrenia in
the majority of, but not all, schizophrenics.
The search for the cause of schizophrenia now focused on what the drug does to reduce
schizophrenic symptoms. In 1963, a Danish scientist linked antipsychotic drugs with the
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PSYCHOLOGY AND LIFE
neurotransmitter dopamine. The original form of the dopamine hypothesis was that
schizophrenia, or at least one form of it, was the result of excessive dopamine activity in the
brain. It was soon realized that this hypothesis is an oversimplification, and as other
neurotransmitters became involved, the hypotheses became more complex.
Other explanations have been suggested. In 1977, hemodialysis was reported to lead to dramatic
improvement in a significant number of schizophrenics. Studies sponsored by the National
Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) failed to support the idea that schizophrenia is related to
contaminated blood. It has also been suggested that viral infection plays a role in schizophrenia.
Perhaps the cause is a slow-acting virus that takes years to flare into an active infection that
produces schizophrenic symptoms.
Fetal brain damage during the first trimester of pregnancy has been suggested as a factor that
predisposes people to schizophrenia. A study of 50 male schizophrenics showed that they were
much more likely than non-schizophrenics to have minor physical abnormalities that presumably
resulted from the same interruption of fetal development Additionally, there is a great deal of
evidence from family and twin studies to support the idea of a genetic component in
schizophrenia, although a genetic marker has not been identified.
Research on psychosocial causes also continues. Many mental health professionals take an
interactionist view, the position that schizophrenia results when biological vulnerability is
combined with adverse environmental circumstances. Some psychologists have pointed to
intrafamily problems, and some parents have been labeled “schizophrenogenic” because they
presumably increase the probability of schizophrenia in their children. Stress has also been
suggested as a causal factor in schizophrenia. Research has led scientists to the conclusion that
schizophrenia is probably not a single, unitary disorder, but that there are schizophrenias, which
have several or many causes.
Alien Abductions and Out-of-Body Experiences
In recent years, much publicity has been given to people who claim that they were abducted by
aliens while lying in their beds, sleeping. Most scientists are skeptical of such claims, and many
believe that these experiences may reflect some type of REM sleep dissociative experience. Two
other well publicized types of dissociation are the so-called "out of body" and "near death"
experiences. Most people claiming to have had these experiences appear to be otherwise rational
individuals who would make believable witnesses in any courtroom (if they were discussing
almost any other topic but this one), and they appear to be truthful in their belief that what they
experienced was real. While clearly something has happened to them, what might it be?