BASIC CONCEPTS

— When novelists claim they do not invent it, but hear voices and find stories in their head, they are neither joking nor crazy.

— When characters, narrators, or muses have minds of their own and occasionally take over, they are alternate personalities.

— Alternate personalities and memory gaps, but no significant distress or dysfunction, is a normal version of multiple personality.

— normal Multiple Personality Trait (MPT) (core of Multiple Identity Literary Theory), not clinical Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD)

— The normal version of multiple personality is an asset in fiction writing when some alternate personalities are storytellers.

— Multiple personality originates when imaginative children with normal brains have unassuaged trauma as victim or witness.

— Psychiatrists, whose standard mental status exam fails to ask about memory gaps, think they never see multiple personality.

— They need the clue of memory gaps, because alternate personalities don’t acknowledge their presence until their cover is blown.

— In novels, most multiple personality, per se, is unnoticed, unintentional, and reflects the author’s view of ordinary psychology.

— Multiple personality means one person who has more than one identity and memory bank, not psychosis or possession.

— Euphemisms for alternate personalities include parts, pseudonyms, alter egos, doubles, double consciousness, voice or voices.

— Multiple personality trait: 90% of fiction writers; possibly 30% of public.

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Friday, November 2, 2018

How to screen for multiple personality (post 2): Do you need to use hypnosis or a drug-assisted interview? No, in most cases.

I have never used hypnosis or a drug-assisted interview to screen for multiple personality, to meet a person’s alternate personalities, and to make this diagnosis.

Hypnosis and drug-assisted interviews are more likely to be used by clinicians who specialize in multiple personality, which I have not. It has never been more than about four percent of my psychiatric practice.

Most diagnoses of multiple personality are made by clinicians who do not specialize in it, and who are very surprised when they first see it, because it was barely mentioned in their training.

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