“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.