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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Sunday, January 1, 2023

Neglect: Some Psychiatrists and Columnists Neglect Multiple Personality

As a psychiatrist, I have been very strict and careful in diagnosing multiple personality (a.k.a. dissociative identity disorder), but it is in the diagnostic manual, because it does exist, and those psychiatrists who never make the diagnosis may be negligent.


Columnists (1, 2) are not in a position to make psychiatric diagnoses, but are paid to speculate about persons in the news. So when persons in the news have variable personas, but columnists fail to speculate about multiple personality, they may be negligent.


1. David Brooks. “The Sad Tales of George Santos.” New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/28/opinion/george-santos-lies.html

2. Carlos Lozada. “How the House of Trump Was Built.” New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/28/opinion/trump-haberman-baker-glasser-draper.html

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