BASIC CONCEPTS

— When novelists claim they do not invent it, but hear voices and find stories in their head, they are neither joking nor crazy.

— When characters, narrators, or muses have minds of their own and occasionally take over, they are alternate personalities.

— Alternate personalities and memory gaps, but no significant distress or dysfunction, is a normal version of multiple personality.

— normal Multiple Personality Trait (MPT) (core of Multiple Identity Literary Theory), not clinical Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD)

— The normal version of multiple personality is an asset in fiction writing when some alternate personalities are storytellers.

— Multiple personality originates when imaginative children with normal brains have unassuaged trauma as victim or witness.

— Psychiatrists, whose standard mental status exam fails to ask about memory gaps, think they never see multiple personality.

— They need the clue of memory gaps, because alternate personalities don’t acknowledge their presence until their cover is blown.

— In novels, most multiple personality, per se, is unnoticed, unintentional, and reflects the author’s view of ordinary psychology.

— Multiple personality means one person who has more than one identity and memory bank, not psychosis or possession.

— Euphemisms for alternate personalities include parts, pseudonyms, alter egos, doubles, double consciousness, voice or voices.

— Multiple personality trait: 90% of fiction writers; possibly 30% of public.

— Each time you visit, search "name index" or "subject index," choose another name or subject, and search it.

— If you read only recent posts, you miss most of what this site has to offer.

— Share site with friends.

Sunday, November 10, 2013

DSM-5 Says Multiple Personality (Dissociative Identity) is More Common Than Schizophrenia

American Psychiatric Association: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition. Arlington VA, American Psychiatric Association, 2013.

Prevalence (in the general population)
Schizophrenia: 0.3%—0.7%
Dissociative Identity Disorder: 1.5%

Multiple personality is two to five times as common as schizophrenia.

So why is it, then, that schizophrenia is a common diagnosis by most psychiatrists, but that most psychiatrists (and other mental health professionals) go through their whole professional lives without ever diagnosing multiple personality, leading most psychiatrists (and others) to think that multiple personality is rare, and leading some psychiatrists (and others), including some of the most eminent, to think that multiple personality is “bunk”?

I answered that question in the first post of this blog (June 2013). In short, multiple personality is a condition that is designed to keep secrets, and to keep itself secret—it becomes obvious only after diagnosis, when the cat is out of the bag, so to speak—and most mental health professionals have never been taught how to make the diagnosis.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Thank you for taking the time to comment (whether you agree or disagree) and ask questions (simple or expert). I appreciate your contribution.

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)