Hearing Voices (Part 2): the idea that nonpsychotic voices indicate multiple personality has predictive power for findings in the life and work of novelists.

Strictly speaking, the voices heard in multiple personality are not auditory hallucinations, if the latter are defined as imaginary voices that the person thinks are objectively real. A person with schizophrenia thinks that other people can hear the voices that they do, or, if other people can’t, it is only because other people do not have computer chips implanted in their brain. Whereas, a person with multiple personality knows that their voices are not objectively real, even though these voices and the “people” who speak them may, at times, feel “more real than real.”

Now, you may wonder, what is the practical use of saying that when nonpsychotic people hear voices, it may indicate multiple personality? Making that claim is justified by its predictive power. That is, if nonpsychotic novelists hear voices, it is predictive of finding evidence of multiple personality in their biographies, creative process, and works (which is what I have been doing in this blog for the last few years).