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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Thursday, June 13, 2024

“Mind Games” (post 2) by Nora Roberts: Thea has “parts,” a euphemism for alternate personalities in multiple personality

“Part of her thought…but the other part knew…(1, p. 57).


Comment: In multiple personality (a.k.a. dissociative identity disorder), an alternate personality is a part of the person that has a mind of its own, which may disagree with other “parts.”


In the psychiatric evaluation of a patient for multiple personality, the experienced interviewer will initially avoid asking patients if they have any other “personalities," but instead use the euphemism, “parts” (2, p. 92).


Search “parts” in this blog for its discussion in past posts on other novels.


1. Nora Roberts. Mind Games. New York, St. Martin’s Press, 2024.

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

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