Multiple Personality is “more real than real,” the brain’s version of modern technology’s Virtual Reality

How you react to the definition of multiple personality in the last post will depend on whether you, yourself, do or don’t have it.

If you don’t have multiple personality, you may believe that normal people can’t and don’t really think that way. You may think that a person could pretend or imagine that they experience the presence of more than one person. But you can’t believe that they truly experience these “people” as being, in Toni Morrison’s words, “much more real than real people.” 

If you do have multiple personality, you may believe that everyone has their own private people, just as you do. But since it’s a private thing, they don’t talk about it, any more than you discuss your private people with them. If you are a novelist, perhaps you have discussed this with other novelists, and since other novelists probably are like you, that only confirmed your belief that everyone, deep down, is the same (although you wouldn’t be surprised if people without artistic sensibility weren't in touch with it).

Morrison’s phrase (quoted above) is a great way of expressing the point that, to people with multiple personality, it’s very real (subjectively), even though a part of their mind is always well aware that it’s not real (objectively).

Multiple personality might be thought of as the brain’s version of modern technology’s virtual reality. You know it’s not real, but it sure seems real, maybe more real than real.