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.

— Each time you visit, search "name index" or "subject index," choose another name or subject, and search it.

— If you read only recent posts, you miss most of what this site has to offer.

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Wednesday, November 29, 2023

 “The Da Vinci Code” (post 1) by Dan Brown: Protagonist has features of multiple personality trait

    “He turned and gazed tiredly into the full-length mirror across the room. The man staring back at him was a stranger—tousled and weary.

    “You need a vacation, Robert.

    “The past year had taken a heavy toll on him, but he didn’t appreciate seeing proof in the mirror” (1, p. 9).


Comment: Third person italics are often used by novelists to quote a voice in the character’s head.


The author may not have known that seeing a stranger in the mirror, and being addressed by a rational voice in your head, are symptoms of multiple personality (2, pp. 62, 94). Perhaps he, himself, had had such experiences in the creative version of multiple personality, called “multiple personality trait” in this blog.


1. Dan Brown. The Da Vinci Code. New York, Anchor Books, 2003.

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

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