BASIC CONCEPTS

— When novelists claim they do not invent it, but hear voices and find stories in their head, they are neither joking nor crazy.

— When characters, narrators, or muses have minds of their own and occasionally take over, they are alternate personalities.

— Alternate personalities and memory gaps, but no significant distress or dysfunction, is a normal version of multiple personality.

— normal Multiple Personality Trait (MPT) (core of Multiple Identity Literary Theory), not clinical Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD)

— The normal version of multiple personality is an asset in fiction writing when some alternate personalities are storytellers.

— Multiple personality originates when imaginative children with normal brains have unassuaged trauma as victim or witness.

— Psychiatrists, whose standard mental status exam fails to ask about memory gaps, think they never see multiple personality.

— They need the clue of memory gaps, because alternate personalities don’t acknowledge their presence until their cover is blown.

— In novels, most multiple personality, per se, is unnoticed, unintentional, and reflects the author’s view of ordinary psychology.

— Multiple personality means one person who has more than one identity and memory bank, not psychosis or possession.

— Euphemisms for alternate personalities include parts, pseudonyms, alter egos, doubles, double consciousness, voice or voices.

— Multiple personality trait: 90% of fiction writers; possibly 30% of public.

— Each time you visit, search "name index" or "subject index," choose another name or subject, and search it.

— If you read only recent posts, you miss most of what this site has to offer.

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Friday, January 2, 2015

Ian Hacking Reviews DSM-5: Why Would The London Review of Books Have the Psychiatric Diagnostic Manual Reviewed by a Philosopher?

DSM-5 (1) is the latest edition of the psychiatric diagnostic manual. Why would The London Review of Books have it reviewed by a philosopher (2)?

Mr. Hacking has written about psychiatric issues previously, but does he know what he’s talking about?

He doesn’t. For example, he says that before lithium was approved for the treatment of manic-depression (bipolar disorder) in the 1970s, “there was really no effective chemical treatment for any mental illness.” However, the fact is, modern psychiatric drugs date from the 1950s. The significance of lithium was that the previously available medications for psychosis could be used to treat either schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, whereas lithium was effective in treating bipolar disorder, but relatively ineffective in treating schizophrenia. And since the medication for both disorders was no longer identical, the diagnostic distinction between the two disorders became more important.

The above is well-known and easy to look up, but Mr. Hacking didn’t know it and didn’t bother to check his facts. The latter is more significant than the former.

So why would anyone go to him for opinions about psychiatry? And why would The London Review of Books have DSM-5 reviewed by a philosopher?

 Added Jan. 3rd: The last philosopher who could write with authority about psychiatry was William James (1842-1910).

1. American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition. Arlington, VA, American Psychiatric Association, 2013.
2. Ian Hacking. “Lost in the Forest.” London Review of Books, Vol. 35, No. 15, 8 August 2013.
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