Multiple Personality Disorder

A Denver murder suspect at the center of a controversy over multiple-personality disorder has died of complications from leukemia. Ross Carlson's leukemia was diagnosed just three weeks ago, the day after a state judge ruled him competent to stand trial for the 1983 slayings of his parents. Carlson, who died Thursday, had spent six years in the state mental hospital as the courts and doctors argued over whether he had multiple personalities or whether he was faking the disorder to avoid trial.

Maybe Sybil just needed a good night's sleep. Multiple personality disorder is a rare and extreme form of what psychiatrists call "dissociative disorder," and it was popularized by the publication in the early 1970s of the novel "Sybil. " Psychiatrists have long thought that dissociative disorder might be a person's natural response to extreme trauma, such as child sexual abuse, during which a victim might psychologically protect him or herself by "going away. " A patient experiencing dissociation might describe feeling outside or separate from himself or from reality.

Maybe Sybil just needed a good night's sleep. Multiple personality disorder is a rare and extreme form of what psychiatrists call "dissociative disorder," and it was popularized by the publication in the early 1970s of the novel "Sybil. " Psychiatrists have long thought that dissociative disorder might be a person's natural response to extreme trauma, such as child sexual abuse, during which a victim might psychologically protect him or herself by "going away. " A patient experiencing dissociation might describe feeling outside or separate from himself or from reality.

"The United States of Tara" "Revolution" episode, Showtime, Feb. 15, 10 p.m. The premise Tara Gregson (Toni Collette) is a hard-working wife and mother of two in Overland Park, Kan. She paints room murals, juggling her family and career while suffering from dissociative identity disorder. She decides to take a break from medication but continue psychotherapy.

A judge has ruled that Ross Carlson, 25, who claims he suffers from multiple personality disorder, is competent to stand trial in the 1983 execution-style shooting of his parents. For six years defense doctors have testified that Carlson has as many as eight separate personalities; doctors for the state have accused him of faking. Meanwhile, Carlson has been hospitalized at University of Colorado Medical Center in Denver, diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

"The Minds of Billy Milligan," "Sybil" and "The Three Faces of Eve" are books about only three people, but they contain details of myriad personalities. While the works have done much to publicize the existence of multiple personality disorder, the syndrome went virtually unrecognized until the last quarter-century and still is challenged in the medical profession. There is an increasing acceptance, however, according to Dr.

This book is a guilty pleasure--a psychological thriller that's nearly impossible to put down, yet leaves you feeling empty and irritated afterward, as if you'd just watched a TV "Movie of the Week" when you were really in the mood for Hitchcock's "Spellbound."

On the morning of Aug. 18, 1983, the bodies of two attractive, well-dressed elementary schoolteachers, Rod and Marilyn Carlson, both 37, were discovered alongside a dirt road on the plains east of Denver. They were lying side by side, face down in the weeds, a foot apart. Each had been shot once in the back of the head, at close range, execution style. No signs of a scuffle, any resistance.

A Chicago research psychiatrist testified in a satanic-abuse trial Tuesday that he has examined about 130 patients who remember similar childhood sexual abuse and has found some physical evidence to substantiate their claims. "If 10% of the things I hear are true, then we have a problem in our society," said Dr. Bennett G. Braun, associate professor of psychiatry at Rush University and Medical Center in Chicago. "We are all scared of AIDS, but child abuse is the real cancer of our society."

"The United States of Tara" "Revolution" episode, Showtime, Feb. 15, 10 p.m. The premise Tara Gregson (Toni Collette) is a hard-working wife and mother of two in Overland Park, Kan. She paints room murals, juggling her family and career while suffering from dissociative identity disorder. She decides to take a break from medication but continue psychotherapy.

The family comedy has undergone some transformations of late, thanks mostly to cable television and its restless search for buttons and/or envelopes to push.

Mental illness, though real and often devastating, is subject to fashions and fads. Diagnoses seem to burst into popular consciousness and just as quickly sink into obscurity. A look at the au courant diagnoses of the past and present shows that what's on our minds today might not be tomorrow. * -- Michael Soller * 1700s-1800s: Melancholia 1990s: Depression If John Keats were a citizen of Prozac nation, would he have still penned an "Ode on Melancholy"?

In the face of the trading deadline, Philadelphia ace Curt Schilling told writers that he really would prefer to remain with the Phillies. But, when Schilling bumped into Denny Neagle, a brand new New York Yankee, at a Manhattan movie theater a few days later, he told Neagle, "You lucky jerk. God, that's where I wanted to go. As soon as I saw it on the ticker, I was like, 'Dang him!' " Schilling was on his way to see "Me, Myself and Irene." It's about a guy with a split personality.

His crimes were repugnant and the evidence against Howard Davis Jr. of Woodland Hills was so overwhelming that neither his attorney nor his family ever disputed his involvement in sexual assaults on five females, including a 10-year-old girl. But before and after the portly son of a retired cop was sentenced to 338 years in prison, those who stood by him still maintained he was innocent. He may have been involved in the attacks, they said. But he didn't commit them.

This book is a guilty pleasure--a psychological thriller that's nearly impossible to put down, yet leaves you feeling empty and irritated afterward, as if you'd just watched a TV "Movie of the Week" when you were really in the mood for Hitchcock's "Spellbound."

Mental illness, though real and often devastating, is subject to fashions and fads. Diagnoses seem to burst into popular consciousness and just as quickly sink into obscurity. A look at the au courant diagnoses of the past and present shows that what's on our minds today might not be tomorrow. * -- Michael Soller * 1700s-1800s: Melancholia 1990s: Depression If John Keats were a citizen of Prozac nation, would he have still penned an "Ode on Melancholy"?

The family comedy has undergone some transformations of late, thanks mostly to cable television and its restless search for buttons and/or envelopes to push.

A Chicago research psychiatrist testified in a satanic-abuse trial Tuesday that he has examined about 130 patients who remember similar childhood sexual abuse and has found some physical evidence to substantiate their claims. "If 10% of the things I hear are true, then we have a problem in our society," said Dr. Bennett G. Braun, associate professor of psychiatry at Rush University and Medical Center in Chicago. "We are all scared of AIDS, but child abuse is the real cancer of our society."

A judge dismissed charges against a man accused of sexually assaulting a woman with 46 personalities. Prosecutor Joseph Paulus had asked that Mark Peterson, 29, not be retried because it might be harmful to the victim. Circuit Judge Robert Hawley in Oshkosh, Wis., earlier had overturned Peterson's Nov. 8 conviction because the defense had not been allowed to have a psychiatrist examine the woman before the trial.