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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Thursday, March 17, 2022

Voices in the Head and Contact with Alternate Personalities


“The simplest case is one in which an alter personality emerges, identifies himself or herself, and proceeds to talk with the therapist…”


“Another form of contact is through inner vocalizations.  The patient may ‘hear’ the alter personality speak as an inner voice within, often as one of the ‘voices’ that the patient has been hearing for years” (1, pp. 93-94).


Authors of books such as Chatter: The Voice in Our Head” (2) appear to be in total ignorance of the fact that voices may be voices of alternate personalities.


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

2. Ethan Kross PhD. Chatter: The Voice in Our Head. New York, Crown, 2022.

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