Basic Kinds of Alternate Personalities; Why People Fail to Recognize Multiple Personality When They See It; and Why People Who Have It, Deny It.

Each person with multiple personality is unique. But here is a brief review and general framework.

Host Personality

This is the regular personality, the one who uses the person’s regular name, and who is out, in control, most of the time. The host is often a single, specific, fairly robust personality. In novelists, this might be the personality who does interviews, but who may have little or nothing to do with the actual writing. Indeed, the host may know little or nothing about the alternate personalities.

(However, in some people, the “host” is a group of personalities who take turns in various social situations. In other people, the host is just facade or puppet, whose strings are pulled by other personalities from behind the scenes. As I said, each person with multiple personality is unique, and there are innumerable possibilities.)

Alternate Personalities (“Alters”)

All the other personalities—who, like characters in novels, may range in number from a few to a cast of thousands—are called “alternate personalities” or “alters.” But the word “alternate” is misleading if it makes you think that only one personality is conscious at a time.

All personalities are conscious, simultaneously. However, only some personalities are conscious of each other. As I said above, the host may not be conscious of the alters, but that does not mean the alters are unconscious. I am not conscious of your thoughts, but that does not make you unconscious.

How do I know that alters, when they are not out and in control, are conscious? Because when I interview the host of a person who has multiple personality, and then the person switches to an alter, the alter may know everything that I was just discussing with the host, and can tell me things that the host had done, which the host had not told me, but which the host later confirms.

And how do I know that the host may not be conscious of the alter? Because when the person switches back from the alter to the host, the host may have no knowledge of the alter or what was said—the host has a memory gap—and the host will insist that the whole idea of their having alters or multiple personality is unbelievable. And if I confront the host with the fact that the clock is a half hour later than it was, to their knowledge, a moment ago, they will reply that they sometimes “lose time,” but it’s nothing new, and in their opinion, proves nothing. [I don't use hypnosis or drugs in any of these interviews.]

Protectors and Persecutors

Many of the alters may be off in their own realms—like J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan and the lost boys who never grow up, who are usually off in Neverland—and they are not aware, or only intermittently aware, of the host and everyday life. But for some alters, it is their business to monitor the host and current situation, because they are protectors or persecutors of the host.

The “Mr Hyde” alter, mentioned in yesterday’s post, would be one type of persecutor. Another type would be one who tries to kill the host, behavior which would outwardly appear to have been an attempted suicide. That’s why you have to ask people who attempt suicide if they actually remember the attempt. If they really don’t remember, it may be because you are speaking to a host, while the suicide attempt was, psychologically speaking, an attempted murder by a persecutor alter.

Protector personalities monitor the host so that they can take over if the host is threatened. When a generally peaceful person has a history of violent episodes, you have to ask if they actually remember the violence.

It may often be the case that persecutor personalties originated as protector personalities, who, over the years, have gotten angry that the host is such a wimp.

Child-aged Personalities

Multiple personality begins in childhood (as a way to cope with traumatic experiences) and some alters never grow up, which is why Peter Pan is so obviously a multiple personality story. Search J. M. Barrie in this blog.

Observing or Supervisory Personalities

There may be a personality who has wide knowledge of the whole system of personalities or who is a sort of guru or muse. These kinds of personalities—sometime called “internal self-helpers” or ISH’s—although wise, often do not have the power to control behavior or boss other alters.

Special Interest Personalities

Most personalities have characteristic emotions or interests. Some alters may always be joking, others tearful. Alters may specialize in marriage and family life, playing the piano, or writing novels.

Names

Personalities may be named or nameless. Some names are quite distinct from each other, while other names may appear to be insignificant variations: Annie and Anne may be two different alters.

Named alters are very attached to their names. The surest way to get an alter’s attention is to address that alter by name. Pseudonyms are an illustration of the importance that alters place on their names. Some writer-alters insist on publishing under their own name (pseudonym). Or the regular writer-alters want to distance themselves from the other alter’s genre.

Mostly Behind the Scenes

The greatest misconception about multiple personality is the expectation that, if a person had multiple personality, it would be obvious, that you would see the person flip from one personality to another, like in the movies or a video.

But all you are likely to see is the host personality, and when alters do come out, they usually do so incognito (answering to the host’s name). They don’t want you to know it is them, raise questions, and interfere. Also, they may not want news of their existence to get back to the host.

Most alters, most of the time, are conscious and aware, but behind the scenes. The only times that a person with multiple personality will obviously flip from one personality to another like you see in a video is when they are either in a crisis or are doing it after being diagnosed, for an educational demonstration.

People with multiple personality frequently deny it…

The host personality may not know that they have alters. All they may know is that they occasionally lose time and have memory gaps, and that things happen which nobody else could have done, but they don’t remember doing it. And because the memory gaps make no sense to them and usually cause no serious problems, they may come to forget that they even have them (“amnesia for their amnesia”).

Meanwhile, the alters, who see themselves as people in their own right, not as alternate personalities, do not agree with a diagnosis of multiple personality. Indeed, persecutor alters may think they are so distinct from the host that they can kill the host and go on living.

It is typical for people with blatant multiple personality—who have just been observed to switch personalities, carry on a conversation under a different name, reveal facts that can be verified, but which the host does not know about, then switch back to the host, who has amnesia for the switch and conversation—to adamantly deny that they have multiple personality.

…or call it something else

People with a normal version of multiple personality often do know, to some extent, that they have alternate personalities, but they usually don’t call them alternate personalities or think of it as multiple personality. Euphemisms include alter ego, muse, shadow, character, pseudonym, voice, narrator, double, double consciousness, imaginary companion, waking dream, and daemon, or, in Henry James’s phrase, “the madness of art.”