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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Wednesday, August 9, 2023

“Twisted Love” (post 2) by Ana Huang: Dissociative Disorder in Romance Novel


The same character who had amnesia for her personal history before age 9 (see post 1) now has rough sex, which she says she enjoys, but during which she forgets her own name:


“Did I fuck your brains out, my gorgeous slut? [her flirting lover asks].

“Considering I couldn’t remember my name, probably” (1, p. 170).


Comment: Dissociative amnesia (2) is related to multiple personality (a.k.a. dissociative identity disorder). But since the author has not mentioned either dissociative amnesia or multiple personality, it is up to readers to realize what they’re reading.


1. Ana Huang. Twisted Love (Twisted Series, Book One). Naperville, Illinois, Bloom Books, 2022.

2. Wikipedia. “Dissociative disorder.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissociative_disorder 

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