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, August 25, 2022

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.

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