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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Monday, March 20, 2023

“Mad Honey” (post 3) by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan: Why might a novel about a transgender character mention multiple personality? 

I still have about a hundred pages to read in this novel (1) and I don’t expect the authors to intentionally raise the issue of multiple personality.


But I want to explain why they might have. 


Some transgender persons have actually been found to have multiple personality (2, 3), which is not surprising, because many persons with multiple personality have alternate personalities who identify with different genders.


1. Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan. Mad Honey. New York, Ballantine Books, 2022.

2. Soldati, HaslerR, Recordon N, et al.”Gender Dysphoria and Dissociative Identity Disorder: A Case Report and Review of Literature.” Sex Med. 2022;10:100553.

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C33&q=gender+dysphoria+and+dissociative+identity+disorder&btnG=

3. Schwartz, P. G. (1988). A case of concurrent multiple personality disorder and transsexualism. Dissociation: Progress in the Dissociative Disorders, 1(2), 48–51. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1991-27591-001

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