The Split Personality

Abstract

In the twentieth century, many members of the North American populace came to believe that schizophrenia signalled a ‘split personality’. Sometimes even a ‘Jekyll and Hyde personality’. By contrast, late twentieth-century students of the mind quickly discovered that this immensely stigmatising belief was not the case. Instead, psychiatric textbooks, public campaigns, and psychological course materials cautioned the student of psychology about making such an elementary error. In one way or another, students learned that violence was rare (true). They learned that schizophrenia was commonly misinterpreted by the public as a ‘split personality’ and that ‘the schizophrenic does not suffer from split personality’ (Carlson et al., 2004, p. 779). Introductory texts on schizophrenia pretty much left it at that. However, there is a little more to the story behind this divergence between the public and professionals in their understanding of the term schizophrenia. And it makes a useful and necessary point of departure for further easing ourselves into the history of the concept.