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==The Gothic tradition==
The story and the its characters are very much influenced by the Gothic horror literary tradition. These are tales of the supernatural and they are set in spooky places. Certainly, there are many of the motifs of this genre in the novella. ‘The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’ has many of the themes and motifs of this genre. The Gothic explored how humans could become inhuman. This can be seen in the transformation of Dr. Jekyll, a respectable member of society, into the sociopath Hyde, who is truly monstrous <ref> John A. Evil The Shadow Side of Reality (NJ, Crossroad, 1981), p.. 113</ref>. Another theme in Gothic literature is that of the dangers of scientific investigation. This is perhaps seen in Shelley’s, Frankenstein. Dr. Jekyll is in many ways an archetypical ‘mad scientist’ who transgresses by peering into nature’s mysteries and pays a terrible price.
==Louis Vivet: Multiple Personality==
In the mid-to-late 19th century, doctors were beginning to understand the mental processes of the human mind and began to treat mental health as an illness and not as some character flaw or punishment from god. In the 1860s and 1870s, doctors were beginning to develop modern psychiatry, especially in France. There was a great deal of public interest in this new science and it was widely reported in British newspapers. One case of mental illness that caused a sensation at the time, was that of Louis Vivet. He was the first person to be diagnosed with split or multiple personalities, known today as dissociative identity disorder. Vivet was born in 1863, to a prostitute in Paris, who neglected and abused him. He turned to crime at the age of 8 and was sent to a youth prison. When working on a farm he was bitten by a snake and became semi-paralyzed and unable to walk. At the time, those who were paralyzed were sent to a local asylum. One day, Vivet begins to walk suddenly and this astonished the doctors. A number of medics interested in psychiatry and placed him under hypnosis, to their amazement, they found that Vivet has multiple personalities. The Vivet case, with his reported dozen personality, was a topic of much debate in intellectual circles. It appears that Stevenson was aware of the story of the Frenchman. It seems that the idea for one person, to have two personalities was inspired by the story of Vivet. It was this case that persuaded him to write about the duality in human nature and human’s inner struggle, as they are torn between good and evil.
