The Relevance of Religion to Multiple Identity Literary Theory: One Indication of the Surprising Prevalence of Normal Multiple Personality

Since this is not a theological blog, why do I occasionally have a post, like the last one, which cites religious experience and the Bible? Because it is relevant to Multiple Identity Literary Theory.

The basic idea of the theory is that most novelists, perhaps 90%, have a nonpathological version of multiple personality, and that they use it in their creative writing. But that raises a question: Where do all these novelists with multiple personality come from?

They come from the approximately 30% of the general public that has normal multiple personality. (Only 1.5% of the general public has the mental illness, multiple personality disorder, aka dissociative identity disorder.)

Why do I estimate that 30% of the public has normal multiple personality? First, there are all the novelists with multiple personality, and they have to come from somewhere. Second, among the most avid readers of novels, there are probably some who have a similar psychology to the people who write the novels. Third, there are other professions—e.g., acting—which may also have a relatively high prevalence of people with multiple personality. Fourth, there is the literary theme of the double, which, though it may often reflect the psychology of the writers, probably also reflects the psychology of people whom the writers have observed. Moreover, there are many readers, who, even if they don’t have multiple personality themselves, find the theme of the double interesting, and it may be because they have seen multiple personality in others, even if they did not think of it in those terms. Fifth, there is religious experience, not a rare thing, which I have discussed as possibly indicative of multiple personality, according to William James.