Re: What's the real name for a split personality?

First let me give you background on the term schizophrenia which is incorrectly thought by many to mean “split-mind” or “split-personality”. In fact as named by Bleuler (see below) it refers to the splitting of emotion from other parts of the mind.

The following is from schizophrenia.com and is an accurate representation of the history of schizophrenia.

One of the first to classify the mental disorders into different categories was the German physician, Emile Kraepelin. Dr. Kraepelin used the term "dementia praecox" for individuals who had symptoms that we now associate with schizophrenia.

The nonspecific concept of madness has been around for many thousands of years and schizophrenia was only classified as a distinct mental disorder by Kraepelin in 1887. He was the first to make a distinction in the psychotic disorders between what he called dementia praecox and manic depression. Kraepelin believed that dementia praecox was primarily a disease of the brain, and particularly a form of dementia. Kraepelin named the disorder 'dementia praecox' (early dementia) to distinguish it from other forms of dementia (such as Alzheimer's disease) which typically occur late in life. He used this term because his studies focused on young adults with dementia.

Eugen Bleuler

Swiss psychiatrist and psychologist, born 1857, died 1939. “I call dementia praecox "schizophrenia" because (as I hope to demonstrate) the "splitting" of the different psychic functions is one of its most important characteristics. For the sake of convenience, I use the word in the singular although it is apparent that the group includes several diseases. (1911).”

As far as split personality the real term is Dissociative Identity disorder (in the past called multiple personality disorder), and it refers to people who usually have had traumatic incidents and split off a part of their personality such that they take on the appearance of more than one personality inhabiting the same body.

Hope this helps

Gabriel Vargas md/phd

References: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emil_Kraepelin

schizophrenia.com

Sadock and Sadock Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry