The literary “Double” is a misleading myth; truth is stranger than fiction; persons who have multiple personality rarely have only two identities.

How did the myth of the “double” get started in the nineteenth and early twentieth century? There are two explanations, one biological and the other psychological.

The biological reason is that the two hemispheres of the brain became of scientific and popular interest in the nineteenth century. It was like a discovery that everyone had two brains! So there was a “scientific” basis for a person to have two, but only two, identities.

There were two psychological reasons for the myth of only two personalities: the experimental and the clinical.

Psychologists would do experiments such as “automatic writing.” They would find that with some people, if you put a pen in their hand, suspended the hand over a piece of paper, and then you distracted the person, the hand would write things that the subject was not aware of writing. This was seen as proof that the person had two selves: the regular self who was distracted, and a second self, who was doing the writing. These results were seen as demonstrating “double consciousness,” which was also a common term for multiple personality back then.

The clinical reason for thinking in terms of “doubles” or “double consciousness” is that in cases of multiple personality, it is typical that you initially find only one (or at least very few) alternate personality. And if the clinician doesn’t know any better, and stops there, it will appear that there are only two (or very few) personalities. But there are almost always others that are more hidden.

And this multiplicity (as opposed to duality) is no modern artifact. In a past post, I cited the case of Legion in The New Testament. His name was Legion, because he had a very large number of alternate personalities (thought of, in biblical times, as his being possessed by a multitude of demons).

So I wanted to follow yesterday’s post with this post’s clarification, in case any novelists, reading what Margaret Atwood said, and knowing that they have more than two identities (or “voices”) are thinking that they must be crazy. But no, when a person has more than one identity, having only two is rare. And in regard to mental health, whether you have a dozen identities or hundreds of identities is of no significance. (Of course, when you have hundreds of identities, only a limited number are major.)