In Multiple Personality, how many identities is normal? Does a Great Novel have few characters or many?

The number of identities or characters can range from two to thousands, but it doesn’t correlate with anything.

However, I would make two generalizations. First, there are only a limited number of identities or characters who are well-developed. Second, there are probably more identities or characters—sometimes many more—than you meet at first.

In multiple personality, you might initially meet two identities. If this were the nineteenth century, and the two cerebral hemispheres—like two brains!—was big news, you might be inclined to stop looking after you found these two identities, and declare it a case of dual consciousness.

But if you remain open-minded, you will soon realize that the person has engaged in witnessed behaviors, and has various other documented issues, that can’t be accounted for by either of these two identities. And you will eventually meet the identities that do account for these things.

I have seen people who had only a dozen identities, others who had dozens, and one who had hundreds. The one who had hundreds did just as well.

In short, the number of identities is no more significant than the number of characters in a novel.