# Multiple Personality Disorder strikes again **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 4, 2001, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/multiple-personality-disorder-strikes-again/85372 "2001-10-04T13:21:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/earl_snake-hips_tucker/32/3269_2.png) [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2001, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/multiple-personality-disorder-strikes-again/85372/1 "2001-10-04T13:21:59Z")
This might not be the proper forum, but a lot of times it does generate some debate. Here is a recent case, and here is a related story. Any thoughts??? ---
**Author:** ![NightRabbit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/bbce88/32.png) [@NightRabbit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NightRabbit)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2001, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/multiple-personality-disorder-strikes-again/85372/2 "2001-10-04T14:21:52Z")
Um… I’m not getting either of those links… could you double check them pleeeeeease? ---
**Author:** ![Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/50afbb/32.png) [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duck_Duck_Goose)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2001, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/multiple-personality-disorder-strikes-again/85372/3 "2001-10-04T14:23:41Z")
First link will have to be C & P into the Address window, doesn’t work as a link. [http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,27096,00.html](http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,27096,00.html) > [@](#): > > Judge Throws Out Conviction of Multi-Personality Defendant > > Tuesday, June 12, 2001 > Email this Article > > EVERETT, Wash. — A federal judge has thrown out the kidnapping and sexual assault convictions of a man who had argued he was not responsible for those crimes because another of his 24 separate personalities had committed it. > The decision means that William Bergen Greene, 47, now serving life in prison under Washington’s three-strikes law, could be headed back to Snohomish County for a second trial. > > Greene was convicted after a Snohomish County judge barred the multiple personality defense. > > In 1999, the state Supreme Court upheld that decision, ruling that jurors would not have been assisted in determining guilt because science doesn’t yet understand multiple personality disorder well enough to talk about the sanity of people with that diagnosis, or the sanity of their purported alter personalities. > > However, U.S. District Judge Marsha J. Pechman in Seattle ruled Friday that it was up to the trial court to clarify the question for jurors by establishing standards for assessing legal responsibility. [http://www.heraldnet.com/Stories/01/6/14/13877131.cfm](http://www.heraldnet.com/Stories/01/6/14/13877131.cfm) > [@](#): > > Defendant’s ingenuity toys with legal system > > The “somebody else did it” defense is nothing new in our legal system. Now, William Bergen Greene has introduced a variation, the “I’m not guilty and neither am I” defense. It appears to be working. > > Greene, 47, has five felony convictions, including sexual assaults, sodomy and indecent liberties. But it’s his conviction for the 1994 attack of his therapist that has come under scrutiny. Greene has never denied that he physically attacked his therapist when she came to check on him at his home, or that he held her there for hours touching her sexually before finally tying her up and running off in her car. But, he insists, it was one of his 24 personalities – in this case a 3- or 4-year-old named Tyrone – who actually committed the crime. Recently, U.S. District Court Judge Marsha J. Pechman tossed out the conviction because Greene wasn’t allowed to present the claim at his trial in Snohomish County Superior Court. ---
**Author:** ![Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/50afbb/32.png) [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duck_Duck_Goose)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2001, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/multiple-personality-disorder-strikes-again/85372/4 "2001-10-04T14:26:50Z")
Okay, so now that we’re all on the same page, so to speak… My thoughts are…I dunno. Nobody seems to be questioning the fact that _somebody_ inhabiting the body of the citizen known as William Greene committed a sexual assault, so I dunno why they don’t just pick a name and sentence that personality to prison. Now tell me that’s an overly simplistic approach… 😃 ---
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2001, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/multiple-personality-disorder-strikes-again/85372/5 "2001-10-04T15:16:56Z")
The danger, here, is that a **huge** number of cases of alleged Multiple Personality Disorder have been diagnosed on rather flimsy evidence in recent years. The criteria for an M.P.D. diagnosis, as used by some therapists, are not much more convincing than the criteria for establishing that a “repressed memory” of an alien abduction was not in fact merely a fabricated memory. From [http://www.skepdic.com/mpd.html:](http://www.skepdic.com/mpd.html:) “Spanos argues that most cases of MPD have been created by therapists with the cooperation of their patients and the rest of society. The experts have created both the disease and the cure. This does not mean that MPD does not exist, but that its origin and development are often, if not most often, explicable without the model of separate but permeable ego-states or ‘alters’ arising out of the ashes of a destroyed ‘original self.’”