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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Sunday, February 7, 2021

“Postmortem” by Patricia Cornwell (post 2): First-person protagonist and a voice in her head argue with each other, a textbook symptom of multiple personality


The Textbook

Multiple personality patients “will report hearing voices talking, arguing…in their heads. The voices may be pejorative and critical or supportive…Many multiples are fearful of acknowledging the existence of voices early in the course of therapy, lest the therapist think that they are ‘crazy’…Many host [regular] personalities already have some form of communication with the other alters [alternate personalities] when they present for treatment, although they are usually not aware of what is happening. The experience of the host personality is that he or she gets into arguments with himself or herself” (1, pp. 81-82).


The Novel

“My anxious inner voice was nagging at me again. You just can’t accept you made a mistake, I admonished myself. You just can’t handle the truth…But what if? What if the scenario were a more pernicious one? I silently argued…You want someone to blame because you can’t face the fact that you probably screwed up!” (2, pp. 252-253).


1. Frank W. Putnam, MD. Diagnosis and Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder. New York, The Guilford Press, 1989.

2. Patricia Cornwell. Postmortem [1990]. New York, Pocket Books/Simon & Schuster, 2017. 

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