Tana French (post 2), Frank Conroy (post 7): In multiple personality, the person’s regular, host personality is usually NOT their original personality.

Since Tana French’s character had amnesia for the first twelve years of his life, and since Frank Conroy had amnesia for the first eight years of his life, I made the obvious inference that their regular personality was not their original personality. The memories of those earlier years were in the memory banks of various earlier personalities, including the original personality.

In a past post, I mentioned that the regular personality may not be the original personality (search “glossary original”), but here is more about it:

“Many multiples have a personality who is identified by the other personalities of the system as the ‘original’ personality from whom all others are derived. Kluft has defined the original personality as ‘the identity which developed just after birth and split off the first new personality in order to help the body survive a severe stress.’ Typically the original is not active and is often described as having been ‘put to sleep’ or otherwise incapacitated at some much earlier point because he or she was not able to cope with the trauma. The original usually does not surface until late in the course of therapy, after much of the trauma has been metabolized by therapeutic abreaction. The host personality is not the original personality in most patients” (1, p. 114).

The original personality is not special. It is often a relatively minor personality. It is NOT the real person. The real person is all the person’s personalities taken as a whole.

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