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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Friday, April 19, 2024

“Sociopath” (post 1) by Patric Gagne, PhD: Mirror Experience Similar to Symptom of Dissociative Identity (Multiple Personality)


“Baby [your beloved pet] died.”

“I was in the living room watching television when Mom told me…and my little sister [Harlowe] was [upstairs] crying her eyes out.

“Patric, did you hear me? Mom asked, aggravated.

“I had [heard her], only I wasn’t sure what to do about it. The news of Baby’s death…was just rattling around in my head. I blinked a few times, then nodded to my mother and continued watching television.

“After a heavy sigh to convey that my non-reaction was unacceptable, she headed upstairs to comfort Harlowe. And for the first time I could recall, I was jealous. I wanted to be upstairs crying, too…I knew I was ‘supposed’ to be at least as visibly devastated as my sister. So why wasn’t I?

“I looked at my reflection…I closed my eyes and concentrated until I could feel tears welling up behind my lids. Then I looked again. That’s more like it, I thought.

“The girl behind the glass with tears streaming down her face looked like someone who had just lost a pet. She looked like someone who needed consoling. But I knew the girl on my side of the glass could not look that way, at least not without making a conscious effort. I blinked, and my concentration broke. The tears disappeared. I returned my attention to the television.

“To say I felt nothing isn’t true. I loved Baby more than almost anything in the world…And yet here we were, and here she wasn’t…I get it. I’m just not experiencing it for myself.

“ I could tell that my mother didn’t know what to do with a kid like me…

"It wasn’t so much that I was lacking the feeling as it was that I was separated from it, like my reflection…I could see my emotions, but wasn’t connected to them…” (1, pp. 38-39).


Comment: Search “mirror” or “mirrors” in this blog for past posts on this symptom of multiple personality disorder.


I’m reading this memoir of a sociopath, because I’m not an expert on sociopathy, and I wondered if there were any similarity to multiple personality. So the above passage, near the beginning of this memoir, caught my attention.


1. Patric Gagne, PhD. Sociopath (a memoir). New York, Simon & Schuster, 2024. 

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