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, November 20, 2023

“Rules of Prey” (post 1) by John Sanford: Serial killer sees someone other than himself when he looks in the mirror, a symptom of multiple personality

“Jeannie Lewis [a realtor]. He tucked her card into his wallet…For the next few weeks, he saw the card each time he took his wallet out of his pocket…A definite candidate…When he got out of the shower, he saw a strange face in the mirror, floating behind the steamed surface. It had happened before…It was Lewis, smiling at him, engaged in his nudity…He decided to collect her on a Thursday…There was a moment’s hesitation at the other end of the line and the maddog was afraid she had forgotten him. Then she said, ‘Oh…yes, I think I remember…


“Well, I don’t want to inconvenience you…”

“No, no problem. I know that house…I’ll be there in ten minutes.”


“…Once he attacked, she had to die, because she’d seen his face…(1, pp. 31-35).


Comment: “MPD patients often report seeing themselves as different people when they look into a mirror” (2, p. 62).


Unless the serial killer, nicknamed "maddog,” is later labeled as having multiple personality disorder, his mirror symptom would be a reflection of the author’s multiple personality trait.


1. John Sanford. Rules of Prey (A Lucas Davenport Novel) [1989]. New York, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2017.

2. Frank W. Putnam MD. Diagnosis and Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder. New York, The Guilford Press, 1989.

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