Wall Street Journal article about Multiple Personality in Everyday Life

Inadvertently, Elizabeth Bernstein’s article “Self Talk” (May 6, 2014) points to evidence of normal multiple personality in everyday life.

“Self-talk,” she explains, “is what happens when you make yourself the target of your own comments…You’re having a conversation with yourself.”

But an important distinction which is not made in the article is that many people do, but many other people don’t, self-talk. When alone, the people who don’t self-talk may speak out loud or mutter, but they address Life, Luck, a medical condition, a particular group or person—what- or whomever—but not themselves. Thus, self-talk is not just a generic type of thinking that everyone does. It is something that some people do and other people don’t.

The article interviews only one person in any depth about his self talk. It is a 77-year-old retired CEO, who “has been talking to himself for more than 70 years. He was a lonely child…and invented three imaginary friends [each of whom was named]…with whom he had regular conversations.” As an adult, “He says it’s his conscience speaking,” but it is the type of “conscience” who will sometimes use “barnyard words.” He wasn't asked if he has more than one “conscience” who speaks to him.

Since the CEO has evidently been a quite normal person, whose self-talk has been reasonable and not dysfunctional, this would be an example of normal multiple personality (as opposed to multiple personality disorder).