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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Saturday, August 20, 2022

“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.

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