Disney-Pixar and Pete Docter’s animated movie “Inside Out”: Is it about a young girl’s various emotions or about her normal multiple personality?

“The story takes place mostly in the head of an 11-year-old girl named Riley…The real action…unfolds among Riley’s personified feelings…Riley’s brain is controlled by five busy, contentious emotions: Fear, Anger, Disgust, Sadness, and Joy” (A. O. Scott, New York Times, June 19, 2015). Each of these characters looks different and has its own voice. The five voices in Riley’s head are furnished by five different actors: three women and two men.

In multiple personality, it is quite common for each of the various alternate personalities (alters) to have its predominant emotion, its own tone of voice, and its own self-image. It is also common to have personalities of the opposite sex. And the alters are sometimes visualized by the person or heard as voices in the person’s head. Moreover, one of the main ways to distinguish voices of alters from ordinary thoughts (talking to oneself) is that alters argue with the person (host personality) and among themselves. They are, as A. O. Scott puts it, “contentious.” They have minds of their own.

In contrast, persons without multiple personality do not hear voices arguing in their head.

Since Riley does not have significant distress and/or dysfunction from her multiple personality—in fact, it is helpful to her—she has normal multiple personality (as opposed to multiple personality disorder).

Thus, one of the themes of this movie is that normal multiple personality is a good thing and may help people cope.