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.