Former President Trump prides himself on being an Aggressive Winner like his Father, so why is his Hairstyle more like his Mother’s than his Father’s?

“Donald Trump looks in the mirror and sees…his mother. Or, at least, his mother’s hair. Any observer can instantly understand that Donald Trump’s hair doesn’t have to look the way it does—and wouldn’t, in fact, without great forethought and effort…Donald Trump’s hairstyle shares the same assertive disregard for both gravity and natural hair color with the style his mother wore…Why does Trump wear his hair so similar to the parent he felt didn’t understand him?” (1, pp. 25-26).

Since I haven’t finished reading this book, I reserve judgment.

Added later same day: I didn't find anything else that interested me. As to his hair, what I had noted in past posts was his changes in hair color, sometimes from day to day, suggestive of switches from one personality to another.

1. Justin A. Frank, MD. Trump on the Couch. New York, Avery/Penguin Random House, 2018.

The Winner: Does Donald Trump have a “part” who believes he either won or was cheated in the last election? Trump would not be crazy, but merely have an alternate personality, possibly named “The Winner”

Genius vs. Diversity: Organizations may mimic multiple personality via diversity of disciplines, ethnicity, genders, etc., but diversity may not equal one person with multiple personality trait (not disorder) whose alternate personalities coordinate their efforts

Genius: If, as William James said, Genius is based on the ability to perceive in an unhabitual way, then persons with multiple personality trait must be among the geniuses in all walks of life

Former President Trump’s Male and Female Pseudonyms

Since it is common for a person with multiple personality to have both male and female alternate personalities, it is interesting to note that the former president has used both male and female pseudonyms (1).

Of course, since I’ve never interviewed him, I can’t confirm that his pseudonyms have any psychological significance beyond his having a sense of humor.

[Search "pseudonyms" for past discussions.]

1. Wikipedia. “Pseudonyms of Donald Trump.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudonyms_of_Donald_Trump

“A Case of Concurrent Multiple Personality Disorder and Transsexualism” by Pearl G. Schwartz 

https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1794/1351/Diss_1_2_9_OCR_rev.pdf;jsessionid=0E680349D4524C70B55534E82E9DEA1A?sequence=4

Comment: Was the above patient unique? I don't know, since my experience is limited. All I know is that multiple personality is a diagnosis that is often missed [as I often did during my first twelve years as a psychiatrist, because, like most psychiatrists, I had never been taught its typically camouflaged presentation].

Are fiction writers transgender if they are good at both male and female characters? And should discussion of transgender issues include multiple personality?

Unfortunately—for people who like to keep things simple—the answer to both questions is yes, because major characters are alternate personalities, and genuine trans people may also have genuine multiple personality. 

Alternate Personalities: An almost infinite variety—in a large survey of  multiple personality—beyond the imagination of most therapists

“At least half of all MPD [multiple personality disorder] [also known as dissociative identity disorder, DID] patients have cross-gender alter personalities…The male alter personalities of female MPD patients can be strikingly masculine in speech, mannerisms, and behavior” (1, pp. 110-111).

“Personalities who appear autistic may be found within a multiple’s system of personalities. Personalities with specific handicaps (e.g., blindness, deafness, loss of limb function) are relatively common in more complex MPD patients…I have seen four MPD patients who were in programs for the deaf because hearing-impaired alters were in control most of the time. None of these patients suffered from a physiological hearing impairment” (1, p. 112).

“The NIMH [National Institute of Mental Health] survey found that three-quarters of MPD patients had at least one personality who denied all knowledge of any other personalities, and that 85% of cases also had a personality who claimed to know all the other personalities” (1, pp. 114-115).

“…male MPD patients tend to have significantly more sociopathy and alcohol abuse” (1, p. 128).

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

“Memory of Departure” by Abdulrazak Gurnah (post 2): “She was distant and preoccupied, as if dissociating herself.” Is “dissociating” redundant?

“She said little, content to follow the conversation with her eyes. The attention she paid to my clowning was amused, but she was distant and preoccupied, as if dissociating herself” (1, p. 110).

Is “dissociating” redundant?  Or does Gurnah mean something by it, other than or beyond, “distant and preoccupied”?

My attention was arrested by “dissociating herself,” because “dissociation” means an altered state of consciousness in the sense of splitting consciousness, as in split personality, dissociative identity, or multiple personality. 

Is any of that what Gurnah had in mind, expressly or intuitively? Or was he just being redundant? I’ll resume reading and tell you if I find out.

1. Abdulrazak Gurnah. Memory of Departure [1987]. London, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021.

Added Aug. 24: This sociologically intense, but psychologically superficial, story, ends inconclusively.

“Memory of Departure” by Abdulrazak Gurnah (post 1): First novel of 2021 winner of Nobel Prize in Literature

The brief first chapter sketches the protagonist’s first fifteen years: Hassan Omar’s African family is poor. His father is physically abusive. His mother is too frightened to intervene. He witnesses his brother die in a fire. Bullies in the neighborhood threaten to sodomize their victims (2, 3).

If Hassan had dissociative tendencies, he would have had enough childhood trauma to develop dissociative identity (multiple personality). But neither dissociation nor multiple personality is described in the first chapter.

1. Wikipedia. “Abdulrazak Gurnah.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdulrazak_Gurnah

2. Abdulrazak Gurnah. Memory of Departure [1987]. London, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021.

3. Wikipedia. “Memory of Departure.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_of_Departure

“Breaking Free” by Herschel Walker (post 11, conclusion): Why was this book ignored by most reviewers?

First, I blame the Simon & Schuster cover, which does not quote or cite any easily recognizable expert on multiple personality, except for the name of Herschel Walker’s therapist, Dr. Jerry Mungadze, whose expertise was, at first, hard for me to confirm. What I found was that Dr. Mungadze’s Ph.D. was in counseling, not psychology, but that he probably was an expert on multiple personality.

Second, the book has no dramatic scenes like you would find in a movie.

Third, the book’s ending is almost like a lecture on multiple personality, and reviewers may not like to be lectured about a subject that makes them uncomfortable.

My opinion is that Herschel Walker probably did have multiple personality, but that since I have never interviewed him, and the book does not depict an expert interview, all I can say is that his diagnosis of multiple personality is quite plausible.

1. Herschel Walker with Gary Brozek and Charlene Maxfield. Breaking Free: My Life with Dissociative Identity Disorder.  Foreword by Dr. Jerry Mungadze. New York, Touchstone/Howard Simon & Schuster, 2009.

“Breaking Free” by Herschel Walker (post 10):  Brief examples of his vague, functional references to alternate personalities (alters)

When Walker had an anterior shoulder dislocation while playing American football, the doctor said “Reducing the shoulder on-site would be too painful. There could be complications. You’d need to be under anesthesia.” But Walker refused to leave the game, and “Together, the Hero and Warrior alters chimed in, ‘They don’t know me. This ain’t no big deal. I’ve come too far to let this stop me’ …and the alter who takes on all my pain came into play” (1, pp. 123-124).

“There was me, there were the alters, and there was some other part of me that acted as a mediator between us—another part of my identity whom I wasn’t conscious of, but must have been conscious of me and those other sides of me. He was the one who was in control, I guess” (1, p. 131).

“I would refer to myself in the third person…I’ve already said that there was the essential Herschel and other satellite Herschels as well…(1, p. 158).

Comment: The above may strike many readers and reviewers as being too vague to be real multiple personality, but this is not a movie.

1. Herschel Walker with Gary Brozek and Charlene Maxfield. Breaking Free: My Life with Dissociative Identity Disorder.  Foreword by Dr. Jerry Mungadze. New York, Touchstone/Howard Simon & Schuster, 2009. 

“Breaking Free” by Herschel Walker (post 9): Why doesn’t Walker refer to his alternate personalities (“alters”) by their personal names?

I’m halfway through this memoir of avowed multiple personality and I wonder why Walker continues to refer to each of his alters by its role in his life, not by its name? In therapy for multiple personality, alters are commonly addressed according to their role, function, or most prominent characteristic only when you first meet them. But then you find out their name, age, and gender, and refer to them by their personal name from then on. You would continue to refer to them by their function or most prominent characteristic only if they really didn’t have or want a personal name (which is true of some alters). Moreover, addressing alters by their personal name is common courtesy and the surest way to get their attention. (Was Walker trying to avoid getting their attention, and writing this memoir behind their backs?)

It is important to ask alters not only their name, but their age as they see it, because they tend to act their age (which could be that of a young child or mature adult). In addition, an alter’s age may correspond to the age at which the person (in this case Herschel Walker) had a certain trauma or problem for which that alter was designed to cope. And it is important to ask the alter’s gender—which may or may not be the same as the person’s—for similar reasons.

It is ironic that I’m criticizing Walker for his seemingly nameless alters, since I have many past posts in which I point out that namelessness suggests multiple personality, because it is more common in multiple personality than in regular life. But I never said that all of a person’s alters are likely to be unnamed.

1. Herschel Walker with Gary Brozek and Charlene Maxfield. Breaking Free: My Life with Dissociative Identity Disorder.  Foreword by Dr. Jerry Mungadze. New York, Touchstone/Howard Simon & Schuster, 2009.

P.S. Aug. 19: Perhaps one of the personalities who wrote Walker's memoir did not want the alters' names published. This issue of authorship, because of possible multiple personality among fifty-five writers, is highlighted by the title of a book by editor, Daniel Halpern: "Who's Writing This?" New York, ecco Harper Perennial, 1995.

Herschel Walker (post 8): Do politicians of a feather flock together? Can you recognize multiple personality by association?

The proverb “Birds of a feather flock together” (1) suggests that since Herschel Walker has multiple personality, also known as “dissociative identity disorder” (2), then the politician who backed his candidacy for United States Senator from the State of Georgia in 2022, former President Trump, might also have multiple personality.

But if a skeptic were to argue that politicians don’t have feathers, I would have no rebuttal.

1. Wikipedia. “Birds of a feather flock together.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birds_of_a_feather_flock_together

2. Herschel Walker with Gary Brozek and Charlene Maxfield. Breaking Free: My Life with Dissociative Identity Disorder.  Foreword by Dr. Jerry Mungadze. New York, Touchstone/Howard Simon & Schuster, 2009.

Lying: Is it more common in persons with multiple personality? And when is “lying” a core creative ability?

“The experience of being called a liar is common for multiple personality patients. Apparent pathological lying or disavowing of observed behavior is one of the best diagnostic predictors in child and adolescent multiples [persons with multiple personality]. Adult MPD [multiple personality disorder] patients will often recount that they acquired a reputation as liars in childhood. I will ask patients whether they have often had the experience of being accused of lying when they believed that they were telling the truth. This may happen to all of us at some time or other, but MPD patients will have this experience frequently in childhood and fairly often as adults” (1, p. 78).

The easiest explanation is memory gaps. The person’s regular personality doesn’t remember what the person had been observed doing when an alternate personality had been in control. But that doesn’t explain why multiples (persons with multiple personality) sometimes claim to remember things that just aren’t true, like when Herschel Walker claimed he had graduated in the top 1% of his college class, when the fact is that he hadn’t graduated (see past post).

Most persons with multiple personality are very truthful, indeed sticklers for the truth, but occasionally they may latch on to, and “remember,” something that is true only in an emotional sense, like the time some multiples “remembered” having undergone “satanic ritual abuse” in childhood, which was alleged to have been a widespread conspiracy, but was rarely, if ever, proved.

Indeed, it may be this ability to imagine something fictional as though it were a virtual reality that, for fiction writers, is a core creative ability.

Search “lying” for past discussions.

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

Herschel Walker (post 7): He hears voices, arguing

“Every few seconds, I’d hear a voice telling me, ‘No, Herschel, that’s wrong. You can’t shoot a man down in cold blood over this.’ Over that voice I’d hear another voice urging me on: ‘You’ve got to take care of business. This guy has done you wrong. You can’t let him get away with that. Kill him.’ Over and over these two voices were shouting at me, each one pleading with me…” (1, p. 5).

1. Herschel Walker with Gary Brozek and Charlene Maxfield. Breaking Free: My Life with Dissociative Identity Disorder.  Foreword by Dr. Jerry Mungadze. New York, Touchstone/Howard Simon & Schuster, 2009.

“Breaking Free” by Herschel Walker (post 6): Correction: The cover does note “Forward by Dr. Jerry Mungadze,” religiously sensitive expert on dissociative identity disorder (multiple personality)

“Jerry Mungadze, Ph.D., specializes in the treatment of dissociative disorders. He is the founder and director of the Mungadze Association's nationally renowned outpatient and inpatient hospital unit in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. He is also an adjunct professor at Dallas Baptist University in Dallas, Texas, and much of his time is spent traveling both nationally and internationally presenting seminars, workshops, lectures, and case consultations” (1).

1. “Critical issues in the dissociative disorders field: six perspectives from religiously sensitive practitioners” Journal of Psychology and Theology, Jun 22, 2003. https://www.thefreelibrary.com/_/print/PrintArticle.aspx?id=105501002

2. Herschel Walker with Gary Brozek and Charlene Maxfield. Breaking Free: My Life with Dissociative Identity Disorder.  Foreword by Dr. Jerry Mungadze. New York, Touchstone/Howard Simon & Schuster, 2009.

“Breaking Free: My Life with Dissociative Identity Disorder” by Herschel Walker (post 5): Does the book’s publisher think it is credible?

Neither the book’s cover nor the publisher’s Herschel Walker page https://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Herschel-Walker/41003242 claims that anyone associated with this book is an expert on dissociative identity disorder (multiple personality disorder) or even a licensed psychologist. But I plan to read the book anyway and judge it on its own merits.

1. Herschel Walker with Gary Brozek and Charlene Maxfield. Breaking Free: My Life with Dissociative Identity Disorder. New York, Touchstone/Howard Simon & Schuster, 2009.

Herschel Walker (post 4): American football star, who has claimed longterm friendship with former President Trump and multiple personality since childhood

Originally, since they are not fiction writers, neither Trump nor Walker were of interest here. Trump became of interest only because he’d used pseudonyms, and the frequent accusations against him of lying, both of which are occasionally clues to multiple personality. Search “pseudonyms” and “lying" for relevant past posts.

The reason I did not read Walker’s memoir about his having multiple personality back when it was first published is that this blog is about discovering multiple personality, not verifying it. And I have only recently broadened my scope to famous people, and not just famous fiction writers (which is the easiest group for me to study, because of its high proportion of multiple personality and the availability of published writing).

“Breaking Free: My Life With Dissociative Identity Disorder [Multiple Personality]” by Herschel Walker (post 3): Now I plan to read Breaking Free, his 2009 memoir

“Herschel Walker is a former American football star who won the Heisman Trophy in college and played in the National Football League (NFL) for 12 seasons. From 2018 to 2020, he served on the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition under President Donald Trump. Currently, he is the Republican nominee in the 2022 United States Senate election in Georgia…In a number of speeches and interviews over the years, Walker lied that he had graduated from the University of Georgia in the top 1% of his class…He did not graduate” (1). Video interview (2).

1. Wikipedia. “Herschel Walker.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herschel_Walker
2. Video interview https://youtu.be/bX3F-CkTaFU

2 Books on Shakespeare: "Dualities" and "Multiplicity"

When I decided to take another look at Shakespeare, I sent for books with relevant titles, but now that I see two of these books’ indices (1, 2), I find that their titles don't refer to Shakespeare’s psychological dividedness (dissociative identity or multiple personality), which I should have guessed. The laugh’s on me.

1. Marion Bodwell Smith. Dualities in Shakespeare. University of Toronto Press, 1966.

2. Brian Gibbons. Shakespeare and Multiplicity. Cambridge University Press, 1993.

“The Comedy of Errors” (post 3) by Shakespeare: So far, the play is a one-joke, multiple personality scenario

The joke is that the twins, mistaken for each other, naturally don’t remember what their twin has said and done. But how can I, as the reader or playgoer, not be bored by the same joke, continually repeated?

What is saving me from boredom is realizing that the play mimics a multiple personality scenario in which the twins are alternate personalities with memory gaps for each other.

Did Shakespeare realize that he was making a multiple personality joke? To think that he didn’t realize it might be to underestimate him.

Added same day: I see nothing in the rest of the play to indicate that Shakespeare intentionally used twins with memory gaps to suggest a multiple personality psychological issue. But intentionally or not, the combination of twins and memory gaps does raise the issue. So I classify this play as having unintentional, unacknowledged, multiple personality, which might reflect the psychology of the author. If any of Shakespeare’s other plays also raise the issue, it would bolster that interpretation. Search “Hamlet” for relevant past posts.

“The Comedy of Errors” (post 2) by William Shakespeare: Was Hamlet’s fear of what may come after death merely his procrastination or also cultural?

Since reading his “To be, or not to be” soliloquy (1), I have always wondered, but my question appears to be answered by the second line of The Comedy of Errors:

"EGEON

    Proceed, Solinus, to procure my fall,

    And by the doom of death end woes and all" (2)

Added comment (same day): A possible explanation for the discrepancy in attitude toward the afterlife in those two plays is that they were written by different personalities, some who very much believed in ghosts, etc., and others who didn't.

1. Wikipedia. “To be, or not to be.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_be%2C_or_not_to_be

2. William Shakespeare. The Comedy of Errors. Edited by Charles Whitworth. Oxford World Classics. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2002.

“The Comedy of Errors” (post 1) by William Shakespeare: Twins and doubling (metaphors for multiple personality) in both Elizabethan comedy and Ancient Rome

Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors (1594) is usually said to be an adaptation of Menaechmi by the Roman playwright Plautus (c 254-184 BC). But “The differences between Menaechmi and The Comedy of Errors are clear. In Menaechmi, Plautus uses only one set of twins—twin brothers. Shakespeare, on the other hand, uses two sets of twins….like Plautus' Amphitruo, in which both twin masters and twin slaves appear…It can be noted that the doubling is a stock situation of Elizabethan comedy” (1).

“…transformation, metamorphosis, madness—these and related processes and states constitute a central motif, running through the play from beginning to end…Words such as changed and transformed echo throughout” (2, Introduction, p. 52 ).

Comment: As previously discussed, twins and doubling are metaphors for multiple personality.  Also, search “metamorphosis” (Kafka) and “Nausea” (Sartre’s novel involving protagonist’s “sudden transformations”) for past discussions of their implications for multiple personality.

1. Wikipedia. “Plautus." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plautus

2. William Shakespeare. The Comedy of Errors. Edited by Charles Whitworth. Oxford World Classics. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2002.

William Shakespeare: His multiple personality has been so great an issue that people have seriously debated the true identity of the author of his plays (1)

[People have argued that he couldn't have known or done, this or that, so he must have been someone else, but a variety of alternate personalities could have learned, imagined, and done a variety of surprising things, without telling anyone, except through his works.]

This month I may read one of his early plays, The Comedy of Errors, whose comedy involves mistaken identities and identical twins, which is a common metaphor for multiple personality, since all of a person’s alternate personalities have the same body and therefore look like identical twins.

1. Wikipedia. “Shakespeare authorship question.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare_authorship_question

Albert Einstein: It is unusual for people to attribute a person’s inconsistency to “two personalities” or “split personalities”

Although, in this blog, I have frequently said that a person’s puzzling inconsistency should raise the possibility of multiple personality, most people usually invoke other explanations, including hypocrisy, lying, moodiness, public image, criminality, immorality, and the devil. So why did the people I quoted in yesterday’s post invoke “two personalities” and “split personalities”?

Einstein’s behavior must have seemed so unusual to them that they had to invoke an unusual explanation. 

“Einstein” by Jürgen Neffe: Occasionally called “split personality” or “childlike,” Einstein may have named one of his alternate personalities “Captain Carefree”

“There was something enduringly childlike in Einstein’s appearance and manner…Even when quite old, he never lost the carefree manner of the child…Einstein grew to be a man, a father, and a towering intellect…He retained his childlike essence, however…Albert Einstein was living with two personalities in the guise of a single individual…

“His sense of fun comes through in his limericks and other witty poems:

                               Duty in mind, pipe in hand

                               That’s how Captain Carefree stands

                               Smiling wide, with eyes ablaze

                               Nothing can escape his gaze…

“…Katia Mann, who was a neighbor of the Einsteins in Princeton when she was there with her husband, Thomas Mann, huffily remarked that he [Einstein] had ‘such big goggle eyes’ and ‘something childlike in his nature…

Einstein said that his attitude of childlike “naïveté” was only “20 percent deliberate…” (1, pp. 27-29).

“His fellow student Byland believed ‘he was one of those split personalities who know how to protect, with a prickly exterior, the delicate realm of their intense emotional life.’ Deep in his shell, however, the perpetual child sought refuge in the cosmos” (1, p. 34).

Comment: In multiple personality, since it starts in childhood, the most common kind of alternate personality sees itself as child-aged. Indeed, like Peter Pan, they may be frozen in time and never grow up, unless they are age-progressed in therapy. And when one does come out and control overt behavior, they are seen by other people as childlike, not as simply immature or childish; indeed, sometimes so childlike that a few therapists have mistakenly tried to parent them.

1. Jürgen Neffe. Einstein, A Biography. Translated from the German by Shelley Frisch. New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007.

Albert Einstein: Reasons to doubt my speculation in yesterday’s post that he had multiple personality (the trait, not the clinical disorder)

1. No childhood trauma reported.

2. No fiction writing; although, his visualized scenarios that helped him formulate his scientific theories might be equivalent.

3. No rational voices in his head reported.

4. No puzzling self-contradictions reported.

5. No pseudonyms reported.

6. No memory gaps reported; although, he sometimes insists that he has always had a poor memory.

Comment: The biography I’ve seen so far has little or nothing to say about the above issues and Einstein’s subjective experience, making it impossible to be sure whether or not he had any degree or form of multiple personality. But he certainly had interesting, yet to be fully explained, idiosyncrasies. [And I still think he might have had multiple personality, but, due to lack of information, I don't have enough evidence to prove it.]

Albert Einstein said, “I very rarely think in words at all,” but what has that to do with multiple personality?

I thought of the above quotation in this morning’s post, and another Einstein quote in a recent post in which he recalls having once, at age thirty-five, briefly forgotten his own name. And those two quotes reminded me of the large number of my past posts in which I made the point, in discussing nameless characters and nameless narrators, that multiple personality is the only realm in which namelessness is commonly found. Outside of multiple personality, people almost always have a specific designation, a name or at least a number. Therefore, “I very rarely think in words at all” is an idea that I would think could come only from an alternate personality.

But if Einstein had multiple personality, wouldn't that have been said by an alternate personality and not his regular self? Well, in multiple personality, the regular or “host” personality is usually not the original or “real” personality, but an alternate personality, too (1, p. 114).

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

“Einstein” by Walter Isaacson (post 2): Einstein’s two distinct thought processes or personalities

“Even after he had begun using words, sometime after the age of two, he developed a quirk…Whenever he had something to say, he would try it out on himself, whispering it softly until it sounded good enough to pronounce aloud. ‘Every sentence he uttered,’ his worshipful younger sister recalled, ‘no matter how routine, he repeated to himself softly, moving his lips. He had such difficulty with language that those around him feared he would never learn…

“…Einstein’s developmental problems have probably been exaggerated, perhaps even by himself, for we have some letters from his adoring grandparents saying he was just as clever and endearing as every grandchild is. But throughout his life, Einstein had a mild form of echolalia, causing him to repeat phrases to himself, two or three times, especially if they amused him…‘I very rarely think in words at all,’ he later told a psychologist. ‘A thought comes, and I may try to express it in words afterwards’ ” (1, pp. 8-9).

Comment: First, Isaacson may confuse Einstein’s palilalia (repeating his own words) with echolalia (repeating the words of others). Second, Einstein implies that he had not been merely repeating his own words, but translating his nonverbal thoughts into words. Third, his two ways of thinking—nonverbal and verbal—may have been, in effect, two personalities.

1. Walter Isaacson. Einstein: His Life and Universe. New York, Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2007/2008.

Absent-mindedness: The Three Causes listed in Wikipedia and The Fourth Cause a symptom of Undiagnosed Multiple Personality

Wikipedia (1, 2)

“Absent-mindedness is where a person shows inattentive or forgetful behavior. It can have three different causes:

1. a low level of attention ("blanking" or "zoning out”)

2. intense attention to a single object of focus (hyperfocus) that makes a person oblivious to events around them [the absent-minded professor]

3. unwarranted distraction of attention from the object of focus by irrelevant thoughts or environmental events.

“The absent-minded professor is a common stereotype that professors get so obsessed with their research that they pay little attention to anything else…Albert Einstein was one scholar considered to be absent-minded.”

1. Wikipedia. “Absent-mindedness." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absent-mindedness

2. Wikipedia. “Absent-minded professor.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absent-minded_professor

Multiple-Personality

One of multiple personality’s two major symptoms, Memory Gaps, may cause inattentive and forgetful behavior, which may be misconstrued as absent-mindedness. For example, the alternate personality currently in control may be the one preoccupied with the professor’s studies, and so the professor will appear inattentive and forgetful regarding other matters.