Persecutor Personalities: A common type of alternate personality seen in both multiple personality and “literary double” classics like Dostoevsky and Poe

In my last post, on Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects, I explained the protagonist’s self-cutting as probably due to alternate personalities who wanted to teach the host personality a lesson. Their getting Camille to cut and scar most of her body makes them “persecutor personalities.”

Other literary examples of persecutor personalities are Dostoevsky’s The Double and Edgar Allan Poe’s William Wilson. In Dostoevsky, the protagonist’s “double” (alternate personality) ruins him socially and finally gets him sent away to a mental hospital. In Poe, the protagonist commits suicide when one personality tries to stab the other personality to death, which, psychologically speaking, would be termed “internal homicide.”

“At least half or more of MPD [multiple personality disorder] patients have alter personalities who see themselves in diametric conflict with the host personality. This group of alter personalities, sometimes referred to as ‘internal persecutors,’ will sabotage the patient’s life and may inflict serious injury upon the body in attempts to harm or kill the host or other personalities. They may be responsible for episodes of self-mutilation or for ‘suicide’ attempts, which are actually ‘internal homicides’ as persecutor personalities attempt to maim or kill the host. The perceived degree of separateness that allows one personality to believe that it can kill another personality without endangering itself has been labeled a ‘pseudodelusion’ by Kluft and a form of ‘trance logic’ by Spiegel.

“Some persecutor personalities can be recognized as ‘introjects’ of the original abuser(s) [in the patient’s childhood]; others have evolved from original helper personalities into current persecutors” (1, p. 108).

You might wonder, since multiple personality is a psychological defense, why there would ever be any alternate personalities who identify with the abuser or who evolve into persecutors. The answer is this: An alter who mimics the abuser might have made the child behave in a way that would not provoke the actual abuser to commit actual abuse. An alter who was originally a protector personality may, over the years, have come to view the host personality as an unredeemable, contemptible weakling.

Persecutor personalities are real, and, in some cases, dangerous. I have seen and worked with them in my treatment of multiple personality patients.

1. Frank W. Putnam, MD. Diagnosis and Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder. New York, The Guilford Press, 1989.