Having a pathognomonic symptom unique to it makes multiple personality a more definite diagnosis than bipolar or schizophrenia
A person with multiple personality is not infrequently misdiagnosed as having bipolar or schizophrenia, but a person with bipolar or schizophrenia is rarely misdiagnosed as having multiple personality.
Search "pathognomonic," “diagnosis,” and “mental status” for further discussion.
“The Runaway Bunny” by Margaret Wise Brown: Author’s Creative Split Personality—unconditional love vs. murderous disregard—epitomized regarding Rabbits
The story tells of a mother rabbit’s unconditional love for her bunny, who had threatened to run away (1). In contrast, in real life, the author had been an enthusiastic participant in hunts for fleeing rabbits that would be caught and killed (2, p. 1).
1. Wikipedia. “The Runaway Bunny.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Runaway_Bunny
2. Amy Gary. In the Great Green Room: The Brilliant and Bold Life of Margaret Wise Brown. New York, Flatiron Books, 2016.
Margaret Wise Brown, author of children’s classics “Goodnight Moon” and “Runaway Bunny,” also wanted to write books for adults, but was prevented from doing so by her alternate personalities
“I am stuck in my childhood” (1, p. x) [by her younger alternate personalities]
“She still yearned to write something of literary merit for adults…[But] when she put her pencil to paper to write something for adults, another children’s story, poem, or song poured out…It felt like automatic writing, as if she was only the medium through which the stories came (1, p. 109). [how her regular, host personality experiences her alternate personalities controlling the writing from behind the scenes]
“The sound of her pencil scratching on paper, the wind outside, and the crackling fire were often the only things she heard except the chatter in her head” (1, p. 191). [the voices of her alternate personalities]
“She was only comfortable writing about animals and children—she lost her way when she tried to write for grownups” (1, p. 222).
“For I believe that at five we reach a point not to be achieved again and from which ever after we at best keep and most often go down from. And so at 2 and 13, 20&30, 21&18…” (1, p. 240) [perhaps the ages of some of her chattering and writing alternate personalities]
1. Amy Gary. In the Great Green Room: The Brilliant and Bold Life of Margaret Wise Brown. New York, Flatiron Books, 2016.
“Iron Lake” by William Kent Krueger: Characters in first novel of Cork O’Connor mystery series lack common multiple personality symptoms
I was prompted to read this novel by a recent column in The New York Times Book Review in which the author is quoted as saying of his protagonist: “We’ve been friends for thirty years now...I have come to appreciate him more and more with the passing years, when I discover all of the things that he’s capable of, and all of the ways in which he’s all too human” (1). As is common for novelists, he talks as though his protagonist were a real person, and not merely a creation whose every thought, feeling, and behavior he provides and controls.
However, neither the protagonist nor any other character in this novel (2) is ever surprised or challenged by a voice in his head or a “part” inside himself that has a contrary attitude, to mention two common symptoms of multiple personality that novelists commonly think everyone has, due to the novelist’s own psychology. And the lack of such psychological symptoms makes the characters seem relatively flat and two dimensional; although, their absence from this first novel doesn’t mean they don’t appear in later novels of this successful series, which I may or may not get to read.
1. Elizabeth Egan. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/08/books/review/fox-creek-william-kent-krueger.html
2. William Kent Krueger. Iron Lake. 20th Anniversary Edition. New York, Atria, 1998/2019.
“Why Is My Husband Marrying Her?” By Briana Pozner: The “Modern Love” essay in today’s New York Times
When she heard the “strange, surprising voice” of a “mysterious force,” was it merely a metaphor or an alternate personality?
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/23/style/modern-love-why-is-my-husband-marrying-her.html
Hilary Mantel, award-winning novelist: Obituary and past post on her transgender alternate personality
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/23/books/hilary-mantel-dead.html
2019 past post
“Giving Up the Ghost (A Memoir)” by Hilary Mantel: She is not possessed by the devil, but may have had a male alternate personality
One clue that people may have undiagnosed multiple personality is that they are puzzling even to people who know them well. Another clue, as seen in this memoir, is that they are puzzling even to themselves.
Mantel begins her memoir with puzzlement about whether she sees ghosts (or only has auras related to migraine headaches). “I see a flickering on the staircase…I ‘know’ it is my stepfather’s ghost. I am not perturbed. I am used to ‘seeing’ things that aren’t there…It was in this house that I last saw my stepfather, Jack [when alive], in the early months of 1995…Many times since then I have acknowledged him on the stairs” (1, p. 1).
Comment: As I have previously joked, the English don’t believe in alternate personalities. They believe in ghosts.
Midway through the memoir, Mantel describes an experience that is often quoted in reviews. Since she introduces it as momentous, she cautions readers that it is not what they expect, “some revelation of sexual abuse.” Rather, she feels she has literally had an encounter with the devil:
“I am seven, seven going on eight…I am playing near the house, near the back door. Something makes me look up: some shift in the light…There is nothing to see. There is nothing to smell. There is nothing to hear. But its motion, its insolent shift makes my stomach heave. I can sense…the dimensions of the creature. It is as high as a child of two…The air stirs around it invisibly…I cannot move…I beg it, stay away, stay away. Within the space of a thought it is inside me and has set up a sick resonance within my bones and in all the cavities of my body…My first thought is that I have seen the devil…In the days afterward…Wherever I was, home or school, night or day and in bed or abroad, what I’d seen accompanied me…It is part of me…it is a body inside my body…” (1, pp. 93-97).
Later in the memoir, Mantel minimizes this experience, mentioning it only in passing, as “my mauvais quart d’heure” (my bad quarter of an hour) (1, p. 145).
Comment: The above quoted experience lasted much more than a quarter of an hour: “In the days afterward…” it had become a “part of me…it is a body inside my body…” That is, she felt possessed, which is an old way of thinking about multiple personality.
Moreover, the views of that experience given on pages 93-97 vs. page 145 are so inconsistent with each other that they seem to have been written by different narrator personalities.
And after having seen such narrative inconsistencies in works by various writers, I coined the phrase, “split inconsistent narrative” (you can search it).
[Added Sept. 27: Here is another issue, insufficiently raised in most reviews:]
Mantel says, “I am waiting to change into a boy. When I am four this will occur” (1, p. 41)
At age four, she says, “The onset of boyhood has been postponed, so far. But patience is a virtue with me” (1, p. 51).
“As a knight I am used to arranging siege warfare, the investment of major fortresses…” (1, p. 51).
“It is 1957. Davy Crockett is all the go…We sing he killed a bear when he was only three. Somehow I doubt it. Even I didn’t do that…When exactly do I become a boy?” (1, p. 53).
“Years pass…I realize…that I am never going to be a boy now. I don’t know exactly why. I sense that things have slid too far, from some ideal starting point” (1, p. 55).
“I went to school, taking my knights…I was a small pale girl…but I had a head stuffed full of chivalric epigrams, and the self-confidence that comes from a thorough knowledge of horsemanship and swordplay” (1, pp. 56-57).
“I felt my man’s spirit aroused, my ardor clenching inside my chest like a fist within a mailed glove. Saddle my charger: I’ll canter up their street and decapitate him. My sword arm twitched…I was six…” (1, p. 83).
“I am seven, I have reached the age of reason…I had begun practicing as a parish priest at five years old…Girl could change to boy: though this had not happened to me, and I knew now it never would” (1, p. 86).
Comment: The above goes further than a typical tom boy or ordinary imaginative play, but not as far as transsexualism. Mantel does not describe getting into trouble for being too masculine, so she appears to have switched between male and female personalities, as appropriate.
Her male personality wondered why he could not look male, and thought it was just a matter of time. At age seven, Mantel gave up that hope, personally, but still felt that girls and boys could change into each other, since that had been her subjective experience.
Mantel does not say that she gave up hoping to become a boy because she no longer felt like a boy at times. So she evidently continued to have a male personality (in addition to her female personality), which probably has helped her to write male characters.
1. Hilary Mantel. Giving Up the Ghost (A Memoir) [2003]. New York, Picador/John Macrae/Henry Holt, 2004.
Essay on “nonbinary” terminology and investigative report on Herschel Walker in today's newspapers
Since I’ve written past posts on both “nonbinary” issues and Herschel Walker (a friend of former President Trump who has published a memoir about his own diagnosed multiple personality), I note both the essay on "nonbinary" and the report on Walker in today’s newspapers.
The essayist on nonbinary and transgender terminology decries what he considers tagging every tomboy as transgender (1). I do not necessarily agree with him, but his statistics are startling.
The article of investigative reporting on Walker says he lied about contributing to charities (2). I have discussed lying as a characteristic of some people with multiple personality that is associated with their success as fiction writers, who sometimes jokingly call themselves "professional liars."
Search “nonbinary,” “Herschel Walker,” and “lying” for past posts.
2. David A. Fahrenthold and Shane Goldmacher. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/22/us/politics/herschel-walker-charity-donations.html
High-functioning Multiple Personality in Two Physicians and a Research Scientist
They had been misdiagnosed on at least three occasions before the correct diagnosis was made (1).
These cases illustrate that high-functioning multiple personality is not confined to fiction writers, the main focus of this blog, and that the diagnosis is often missed.
1. Kluft, R. P. (1986). High-functioning multiple personality patients: Three cases. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 174(12), 722–726.
Is Nonbinary ever a Multi-gender compromise?
Many persons with multiple personality have both male and female alternate personalities. And some such persons outwardly appear neither male nor female, because their male and female personalities have compromised.
I don’t know if a multi-gender compromise is a common or rare cause for persons to experience themselves as nonbinary.
And I expect that most nonbinary persons will not be interested in this theory, because they either don’t believe in multiple personality or think that anyone who had it would be mentally ill.
But multiple personality is real, and most people who have it are not mentally ill; for example, most novelists.
Multiple Personality, Multiple-Gender Statue: Sculptor says her statue’s 24 Heads—both feminine and masculine—may represent "Other Selves"
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/15/arts/design/bharti-kher-statue-central-park-india.html
Nonbinary Runners are Gaining Ground
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/14/sports/boston-nonbinary-runners-marathon.html
Multiple Personality with Gender Dysphoria: A Case Report and Review of Scientific Literature (1)
“…people with multiple personality may experience bewilderment and confusion in their gender identity…because their different personalities have different genders…
“Furthermore…it is difficult to diagnose multiple personality…because of a lack of education among clinicians…and because multiple personality patients rarely volunteer information about their dissociative symptoms, so the absence of a focused inquiry about dissociation prevents the clinician from diagnosing the disorder” (1).
1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S205011612200068X Lorenzo Soldati, PhD, Roland Hasler, PhD, Nathalie Recordon, MS, et al. "Gender Dysphoria and Dissociative Identity Disorder: A Case Report and Review of Literature." Sexual Medicine 2022;10:100553. Department of Psychiatry, University Hospital of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland. Published on behalf of the International Society for Sexual Medicine.
“Nonbinary” (post 5): Maybe the question is not “What am I?” but “Who and how many?”
“Is my identity a destination waiting at the end of a long journey?…Each time I made a new discovery about myself, I breathed a sigh of relief because it felt as though I was finally ‘there.’ Each time, without fail, I would get to a point where I was questioning my identity again.
“When we are asked, ‘What are you?,’ the only true answer is ‘This is what I am right now.’ Everything I’ve been through and all the identities I’ve embraced have been true to me…Right now, I am a writer who is polyamorous and a parent who is trans and nonbinary. Right now I can simultaneously feel good about the work I’ve done to discover and honor my authentic self and also acknowledge that I’m not nearly finished with the job of answering the question ‘What am I?’ ” ( 1, p. 98).
1. Micah Rajunov and Scott Duane (Editors). Nonbinary: Memoirs of Gender and Identity. New York, Columbia University Press, 2019.
“Nonbinary” (post 4): More inadvertent indications of multiple personality
The next mini-memoir in this “nonbinary” anthology also mentions a lack of self-recognition in a mirror (1, p. 63). This author then says, “The pieces of the world around me had become fractured and splintered” (1, p. 65) and uses the words “dissociated” (1, p. 64) and “dissociating” (1, p. 70) (multiple personality is classified as a dissociative disorder). But I would emphasize the hearing of an inner voice on page 64 where seven lines addressed to the author are rendered in italics (search “italics” for posts on this convention for indicating an inner voice), and when the author states “my inner self was screaming, ‘Don’t stop it’ ” (1, p. 69): An arguing or opinionated inner voice or self is probably an alternate personality.
1. Micah Rajunov and Scott Duane (Editors). Nonbinary: Memoirs of Gender and Identity. New York, Columbia University Press, 2019.
“Nonbinary” (post 3): Problem with Mirror, Typical of Multiple Personality
“Most days I wish I could be invisible…people aren’t used to seeing a beard and a dress together on one body, except as a joke…my brand of androgyny still isn’t commonplace…I can’t go back in the closet. I can’t live my life pretending to be a man…Yet I don’t have access to the full range of femininity either…When I look in the mirror all I can see is my six-foot-two-inch towering height, my broad muscular shoulders, my huge hands, and my masculine chin, which I’ve been hiding under a beard for ten years…
“Suddenly, I don’t recognize the face staring back at me. It is like looking through a window at someone else, as my heart tries to avoid admitting it is my own body in the mirror” (1, pp. 58-59).
Search “mirror” for past posts on this symptom, which is typical of multiple personality.
1. Micah Rajunov and Scott Duane (Editors). Nonbinary: Memoirs of Gender and Identity. New York, Columbia University Press, 2019.
“Nonbinary” (post 2): Pronouns instead of a host personality?
“As of 2017, the official stylebook of the Associated Press now recommends using the ‘singular they/them’ for nonbinary individuals. The trans community has further spurred the proliferation of new pronouns: s/he [etc.]—the list is innumerable, with comprehensive guides…Best practices include specifying pronouns in email signatures and business cards…and always asking for someone’s pronoun” (1, p. xviii).
For the mini-memoir I’m reading now in “Nonbinary” (1), the contributor’s biography gives the person’s pronouns as “they/them” (1, p. 250). However, the contributor makes self reference in the singular as “I” (1, pp. 58-59), not “we.” Does that mean their subjective sense of themselves is not that of multiple personality? Multiples sometimes do refer to themselves as “we.”
But multiple personality is very secretive, and multiples almost always refer to themselves as “I,” except when they rarely slip and use “we.”
Multiples don’t insist on being referred to as “they” or “them,” because their host personality is usually either male or female, and is usually unaware of alternate personalities, which often include both male and female personalities.
Is nonbinary a form of multiple personality without a host personality?
1. Micah Rajunov and Scott Duane (Editors). Nonbinary: Memoirs of Gender and Identity. New York, Columbia University Press, 2019.
“Nonbinary” an anthology of brief personal, life stories, written by persons who are not exclusively male or female (post 1): Nonbinary and multiple personality?
The book’s Introduction defines its title: “ ‘Nonbinary’ simply means not binary; when applied to gender, it means not exclusively male or female” (1, p xviii).
One of the initial personal stories, “Namesake” by Michal “MJ” Jones—“a black queer and nonbinary writer, activist, educator and musician” (1, p. 248)—recalls: “He’d pressed against my body, kissing me terribly while I was someplace else, someone else…Occupying this space is a constant coming-out process—a creative one where I come up with new names for myself and explain away the confused looks on strangers’ faces…Today, my spirit breathes, and embraces the name I was given, and the new names I create every day” (1, pp. 26, 28).
Comment: I have found the initial, brief, personal essays difficult to follow, but the above excerpts from one of them looks like a story of evolving, named, alternate personalities.
Added Sept 11: Have I, or the writers, misinterpreted? After all, many multiples are nonbinary; that is, not exclusively male or female, but have both male and female alternate personalities.
1. Micah Rajunov and Scott Duane (Editors). Nonbinary: Memoirs of Gender and Identity. New York, Columbia University Press, 2019.
Nonbinary Gender: Sometimes a Compromise in Multiple Personality
Multiples with both male and female alternate personalities may appear unisex or nonbinary as a compromise (2, pp. 110, 120). Of course, people who have multiple personalities, whether or not they appear nonbinary, are not mentally ill, unless it causes them clinically significant distress and dysfunction.
Added Sept. 7: When nonbinary, but not multiple personality, is recognized, the latter is being more discriminated against, as usual.
1. Wikipedia. “Non-binary gender.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-binary_gender
2. Frank W. Putnam MD. Diagnosis and Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder. New York, The Guilford Press, 1989.
"Nonbinary" Joan of Arc
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/01/theater/joan-of-arc-nonbinary-globe.html
Search "Joan of Arc" for past posts.
“Jekyll on Trial” by Elyn Saks: Author’s introductory remarks on feelings of “dividedness” and “out-of-character” behavior
“…each one of us is aware of dividedness within ourselves…At times discrepant parts of our personality take hold: we act wholly out of character and, later, not understanding why, explain our behavior with a naively simple ‘I just wasn’t myself’ or ‘That wasn’t me’ ” (1, p. 1).
Comment: Most people do not have feelings of dividedness and out-of-character behavior. And only people who do have them would think everybody does.
Feelings of dividedness and out-of-character behavior raise the possibility that the person has multiple personality disorder, or, in a generally high-functioning person, what I call “multiple personality trait.”
Search “Elyn Saks” for past posts. She is very high-functioning (2).
1. Elyn Saks with Stephen H. Behnke. Jekyll on Trial: Multiple Personality Disorder and Criminal Law. New York, New York University Press, 1997.
2. Wikipedia. “Elyn Saks.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elyn_Saks
Example of "out-of-character" behavior: An alcoholic patient of mine, who considered herself to have always been heterosexual, was puzzled that she had joined a chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous that catered to the gay community. Also, in her apartment, where she lived alone, she had found literature for a lesbian dating service. She was upset, because she couldn't account for these things. I subsequently met her gay alternate personality.
“Dangerous Charisma: The Political Psychology of Donald Trump and His Followers” by Jerrold M. Post, MD, “The CIA’s Original Psychological Profiler Makes His Case” (front cover)
I was just about to close this book on Trump’s “narcissism” and his “charismatic” relationship with his followers, having not found anything that interested me or was relevant to this blog. But one seemingly trivial quotation stuck in my mind:
“When Trump was asked which experts he consults in developing foreign policy, he responded: ‘I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things…I know what I’m doing, and I listen to a lot of people. But my primary consultant is myself. And I have a good instinct for this stuff’ ” (1, p. 69).
He phrases it as though his own thoughts were a dialog between two people, which is how it can be in multiple personality.
1. Jerrold M. Post, MD with Stephanie R. Doucette. Dangerous Charisma:The Political Psychology of Donald Trump and His Followers. New York, Pegasus Books, 2019.
Trump Steals Secrets: Either Crime Without Motive or Multiple Personality Trait
Former President Trump is old enough and intelligent enough to have known better, but he claims to have taken the secret documents without any criminal motive, which is probably true, since he couldn’t profit from the documents unless he were a traitor, which is unlikely.
So his motive may reside in a relatively normal version of multiple personality, which I call "multiple personality trait."
I see his taking the secret documents, not as the narcissism of an adult, but as the narcissism of a child. He says that these were his secrets as President, so he just took his secrets home with him. But that is the reasoning of a child, and he is not a child, unless, in part, and in some sense, he is.
In multiple personality, the most common type of alternate personality is child-aged, because it is psychologically frozen in time at the age in childhood when it originated.
So Trump’s stealing the secrets was either multiple personality or a crime without a motive. Most people will think it is the latter, or will invent a motive, because they think that multiple personality is rare, but obvious. However, as readers of this blog know, it is neither.
What is a Mental Disorder? Why aren’t Theists (believe in God), Atheists (disbelieve in God), and Novelists (talk with characters) mentally ill?
(post from 2019)
Definition of a Mental Disorder
“A mental disorder is a syndrome characterized by clinically significant disturbance in an individual’s cognition, emotion regulation, or behavior that reflects a dysfunction in the psychological, biological, or developmental processes underlying mental functioning. Mental disorders are usually associated with significant distress or disability in social, occupational, or other important activities. An expectable or culturally approved response to a common stressor or loss, such as the death of a loved one, is not a mental disorder. Socially deviant behavior (e.g., political, religious, or sexual) and conflicts that are primarily between the individual and society are not mental disorders unless the deviance or conflict results from a dysfunction in the individual, as described above” (1, p. 20).
If whatever is going on with a person’s mind does not cause them clinically significant dysfunction and distress, then it is not a mental disorder, they do not get a diagnosis, and they are not mentally ill.
Comments
If what is different about a person’s mind helps them to do worthwhile things that others can’t, then that difference is an asset.
And if someone can write a great novel and you can’t, there is a good chance that their mind and your mind work differently in certain respects.
1. American Psychiatric Association: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition [DSM-5]. Arlington, VA, American Psychiatric Association, 2013.
