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.