“The President is Missing” (post 3) by Bill Clinton (post 5) and James Patterson (post 8): How can you know it is an alternate personality?

In yesterday’s post, I failed to highlight a very important point about multiple personality. When the President’s Chief of Staff switched to an alternate personality, the President recognized that he was seeing a side of her that he had never seen before, but he did not realize it was an alternate personality, per se.

He did not realize it, because the alternate personality, who may firmly believe she is a different person with a different name, and is not the same Chief of Staff that the President thinks she is, does not declare or acknowledge that belief. She does not say, “I’m not Carrie, you fool. I’m so and so. Carrie is a fool for always being loyal to you, but I’m not.” So how could the President ever realize what was going on?

As I’ve said in many past posts, alternate personalities typically prefer to remain incognito. They typically answer to the person’s regular name, so you don’t know it is them. They often think they look quite different from the regular self, and they think people are stupid for not noticing, but they will not announce who they are, because they don’t want people to recognize who they are and interfere with their comings and goings.

So how do you ever know that the person has multiple personality? The most common key is to ask the regular personality about memory gaps.

If later, when the Chief of Staff has reverted to her regular demeanor, the President were to ask her if anything unusual had happened during such and such a period of time, he might be surprised to find that she (her regular, host personality) had no memory of anything unusual.

But then, if the President were to press the issues that came up when she had acted out-of-character, he would precipitate a switch back to the alternate personality. But now, he would recognize what was going on. And the alternate personality, who realizes that her cover had been blown, would acknowledge who she really is (in her view), and be able to give additional information that could be verified.

But then, if the President addressed her by her regular name, she would switch back to the host personality and have no memory for what the alternate personality had told him. Indeed, if he were now to tell her what had happened, and say she has multiple personality, she would probably say he is making it up, since she does not remember it, and she feels it is too far-fetched.

I have seen this happen, clinically.