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.

— Each time you visit, search "name index" or "subject index," choose another name or subject, and search it.

— If you read only recent posts, you miss most of what this site has to offer.

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Thursday, July 1, 2021

Inner Child, Subpersonality, Inner Critic: Popular psychology reacts to alternate personalities without recognizing them as part of multiple personality trait


Multiple personality starts in childhood, and the most common kind of alternate personality is the child-aged alternate personality, who, like Peter Pan in Neverland, may be frozen in time and never grows up.


Since multiple personality trait—multiple personality without sufficient distress and dysfunction to warrant clinical diagnosis—is relatively common (my guess, up to 30% of the general public), it is not surprising that child-aged, and other kinds of, alternate personalities, sometimes get noticed.


However, they are usually not recognized as part of multiple personality trait, which is present in only a substantial minority of the public, and they are called things like Inner Child (1), Subpersonality (2), and Inner Critic (3).


1. Wikipedia. “Inner Child.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner_child

2. Wikipedia. “Subpersonality.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subpersonality

3. Wikipedia. “Inner Critic.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner_critic

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