Seven reasons that skeptics, psychiatrists, psychologists, philosophers, literary professors, writers, and others are against multiple personality.

One reason people give for being against multiple personality is that they have never seen it. But there are many conditions that they have never seen, yet they are not antagonistic toward them.

A second reason some people are against multiple personality is that it is absurd to think that a person could have other people inside them. But multiple personality does not mean, and has never meant, multiple people.

Indeed, to get away from that misunderstanding, the American Psychiatric Association changed the name from “multiple personality disorder” to “dissociative identity disorder” to emphasize that the person is psychologically divided, not physically multiplied. When the person switches from one personality to another, it may look like they are more than one person (hence the persistent popularity of the older term), but the diagnosis has never claimed that anyone is more than one person.

Moreover, the diagnosis of multiple personality has nothing to do with schizophrenia and is not a psychosis. It is unfortunate that use of the nonspecific term “madness” has often confused multiple personality with schizophrenia.

A third reason is that many people come from religious traditions that believed in demon possession. They may see the diagnosis of multiple personality as infringing on religion, or may feel that multiple personality actually is demon possession, which is frightening. But the diagnosis of multiple personality assumes that it is a psychological condition.

A fourth reason goes back to the first reason, and is that even eminent and vastly experienced psychiatrists may never have seen a case of multiple personality. I discuss this at length in past posts on the standard mental status examination: it fails to inquire about memory gaps or to investigate puzzling inconsistencies. Most psychiatrists in the USA and probably elsewhere have never been taught how this diagnosis is made or how undiagnosed cases present.

A fifth reason is the false connection between multiple personality and “repressed memory” and “satanic ritual abuse,” which were fads.

A sixth reason is the lingering effect of Freud and the concepts of “repression” and “the unconscious.” In contrast, multiple personality is based on the concepts of dissociation and multiple dissociated consciousness. In multiple personality, things that are “unconscious” to one personality are perfectly conscious to another personality.

A seventh reason is the claim that multiple personality is a meaningless idea, because, in a sense, everyone has multiple personality. But everyone does not have the subjective sense of being more than one person, and does not have memory gaps for the periods of time that an alternate personality was in control.

The kernel of truth in the idea that everyone has multiple personality is that many more people do have it than most people think, because, as I discuss in this blog, there is a normal version, which is much more common than the clinical version.

The normal version is normal in that it does not cause the person clinically significant distress or dysfunction. Indeed, the normal version may be an asset; for example, in writing novels.