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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Saturday, August 22, 2015

Identity: “How Changeable is Gender” and “Your Brain, Your Disease, Your Self” in New York Times ignore Multiple Personality (Dissociative Identity)

People with multiple personality often have both male and female personalities. Do some transgender people have multiple personality? Do other transgender people not have multiple personality? Dr. Richard A. Friedman and the authors of the studies he cites have not considered these questions. Since I am no expert on gender identity, I won’t offer an opinion, except to say that multiple personality is relevant to any discussion of personal identity.

I don’t see any direct connection between multiple personality and neurodegenerative diseases. But if you want to discuss what makes family members think that the person’s personality or personal identity has changed, then you might take a lesson from multiple personality, in which alternate personalities do differ in moral values and not just memories, and the moral differences may be more important. In literature, this is dramatized as Mr. Hyde or the evil twin.
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