Multiple Personalities, Part One: The History of an Enigma, with Stephen E. Braude

Stephen Braude, PhD, is an emeritus professor and former chairman of the philosophy department at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He has also served as president of the Parapsychological Association. He is author of First Person Plural: Multiple Personality and the Philosophy of Mind, Crimes of Reason, The Gold Leaf Lady, Immortal Remains, The Limits of Influence, and ESP and Psychokinesis. He is the recent recipient of the prestigious Myers Memorial Medal awarded by the Society for Psychical Research for outstanding contributions. He also serves as editor of the Journal of Scientific Exploration.

Here he points out that eighteenth century mesmerists discovered that, during trance, individuals could exhibit two simultaneous and independent states of consciousness. Many variations of this type of experiment were performed over the coming century. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, clinicians began reporting instances of what was known as multiple personality disorder. Patients reported that their various sub-personalities were sometimes unaware of each other. Many other unusual characteristics of this condition are described, including physical changes that are observed between different sub-personalities. Braude maintains that paranormal explanations are not required to understand multiple personalities.

New Thinking Allowed host, Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD, is author of The Roots of Consciousness, Psi Development Systems, and The PK Man. Between 1986 and 2002 he hosted and co-produced the original Thinking Allowed public television series. He serves as dean of transformational psychology at the University of Philosophical Research. He teaches parapsychology for ministers in training with the Centers for Spiritual Living through the Holmes Institute. He has served as vice-president of the Association for Humanistic Psychology, and is the recipient of its Pathfinder Award for outstanding contributions to the field of human consciousness. He is also past-president of the non-profit Intuition Network, an organization dedicated to creating a world in which all people are encouraged to cultivate and apply their inner, intuitive abilities.

(Recorded on February 13, 2016)