[Multiple personality disorder. Presentation of 2 cases and a model of the etiology]

Although the syndrome of Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) has received much interest in the international literature, there have been virtually no professional articles on the topic in German over the last 70 years. This is a report on two cases with nine and 70 persons respectively. Both had undergone severe and prolonged sexual abuse in childhood. Compared with DSM-III-R, the ICD-10 criteria seem to reflect historic reports on alternating personalities rather than recent empirical research on multiple personality. The proposed etiological model postulates that extreme trauma in childhood can result in dissociative vulnerability persisting into adulthood.