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, February 5, 2024

“The Three Musketeers” (post 5) by Alexandre Dumas: Milady is accused of demon possession, a pre-psychological concept of multiple personality


“Anne de Breuil, Countess de La Fére, Lady de Winter,” Athos said, “your crimes have gone beyond the endurance of men on earth and God in heaven…” (1, p. 620). “You’re not a woman,” he said coldly. “You don’t belong to the human race: you’re a demon from hell, and we’re going to send you back there” (1, p. 622).


Since dissociation, the modern psychological mechanism of multiple personality (a.k.a. dissociative identity disorder) was first formulated in France by Pierre Janet (1859-1947) (2), it is understandable that this 1844 novel (1) failed to discuss Milady in terms of her dissociative identity.


1. Alexandre Dumas. The Three Musketeers. Trans. Lowell Bair. New York, Bantam Classic, 1844/1984.

2. Wikipedia. “Pierre Janet” (1859-1947). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Janet 

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