“The Silent Patient” by Alex Michaelides: Title Character’s Unacknowledged Symptoms of Multiple Personality

Alicia is mute since killing her husband. And she’s sometimes heard a voice with a will of its own that could direct her behavior, making it an alternate personality. Moreover, she has had memory gaps for a huge part of her life:

“Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband” (1, p. 5)…“the years passed—and still Alicia didn’t speak” (1, p. 12)…“But if I’m really paying attention [Alicia writes in her diary, in relation to her creativity as a painter], really aware, I sometimes hear a whispering voice pointing me in the right direction. And if I give in to it, as an act faith, it leads me somewhere unexpected, not where I intended…and the result is independent of me, with a life force of its own” (1, p. 57)…“I don’t remember much of the walk…I don’t want to admit the truth to myself—that a huge part of my life is missing” (1, p. 119).

Alternate personalities and memory gaps are the two cardinal symptoms of multiple personality.

What about her mutism? Is mutism ever seen in multiple personality (aka dissociative identity disorder)? Yes: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7649956

1. Alex Michaelides. The Silent Patient. New York, Celadon Books, 2019.