Glossary of Types of Persons: Singles, Individuals, Dividuals, Dissociatives, and Multiples

[Note: Search "host personality" to see a more useful glossary.]

Singles: In the multiple personality literature, persons who have one, and only one, “I” (personality, identity, self). This one “I” plays all the person’s various roles in life and experiences all the person’s various moods. People without multiple personality are referred to as “singles” or “singletons.”

Individuals: In common usage, an individual is a single person (as opposed to a group of people), or a person who is undivided.

Dividuals: A dividual—in anthropological or religious literature—is a person who has a divided sense of personhood. Most dictionaries omit the word or label it as being archaic and not in general use.

Dissociatives: An occasionally used, informal term for persons with one of the psychiatric dissociative disorders; for example, dissociative identity disorder (the official DSM-5 diagnostic manual term for what was formerly called multiple personality disorder).

Multiples: The most common term for persons with multiple personality. A person with multiple personality is “a multiple.”

NOTE: This blog distinguishes between multiple personality disorder (a mental illness affecting about 1.5% of the general population) and normal multiple personality (the kind of multiple personality that is estimated to be present in 90% of novelists and 30% of the general population).