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.

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Wednesday, November 25, 2015

American Psychiatric Association, in DSM-5, indexes auditory hallucinations as psychosis, but many nonpsychotic people hear voices

DSM-5
If you look up “hallucinations, auditory” in the index of DSM-5 (1, p. 929), all the pages referenced are in the chapter, Schizophrenia Spectrum and Other Psychotic Disorders. However, DSM-5, itself, in the chapter, Dissociative Disorders, contradicts the view that voices are necessarily psychotic: 

“Dissociative identity disorder may be confused with schizophrenia or other psychotic disorders. The personified, internally communicative inner voices of dissociative identity disorder…may be mistaken for psychotic hallucinations…Persecutory and derogatory internal voices in dissociative identity disorder associated with depressive symptoms may be misdiagnosed as major depression with psychotic features” (1, pp. 296-297).

The General Public
Most successful novelists hear voices (2).

Many normal people in the general public hear voices:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearing_Voices_Movement#Publications
http://www.hearing-voices.org/voices-visions/
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-28/hearing-voices-in-your-head-more-common-than-thought-study/6504704

Do any, or perhaps many, of the nonpsychotic people who hear voices have a normal version of dissociative identity (multiple personality)? I think so.

1. American Psychiatric Association: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition. Arlington, VA, American Psychiatric Association, 2013.
2. Thaisa Frank, Dorothy Wall. Finding Your Writer’s Voice: A Guide to Creative Fiction. New York, St. Martin’s Press, 1994.
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