ABSTRACT
The first detailed report of Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) is from 1791 (Crabtree, 1993). At that time, theories about the disorder were based on the Marquis de Puysegur's theory of magnetic sleep. In 1784, Puysegur had attended several seminars on healing taught by Franz Anton Mesmer, a Viennese physician. Using Mesmer's ideas of healing by laying hands on a patient (animal magnetism), Puysegur developed a method he termed magnetic sleep, which he likened to sleep-walking. Magnetic sleep "revealed a world of mental activity separated from normal awareness. It pointed to a second or alternate consciousness that possesses distinct personal qualities and a separate memory chain" (Crabtree, 1993, p. 67).
