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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Sunday, June 16, 2024

“Mind Games” (post 3) by Nora Roberts: Both Thea and the Murderer have Multiple Personality and Mental Telepathy

The murderer hears voices taunting him and screaming in his head, and he sees Thea standing behind him in a mirror. They both can interact with people and things at a distance. In short, Thea says, “He has what I do” (1, pp. 110-120), except that she uses it for good and he uses it for evil.


Comment: Hearing voices in the head (2, pp. 62, 94) and seeing other people in the mirror (2, p 62) are symptoms of multiple personality (a.k.a. dissociative identity disorder). As far as I know, mental telepathy is fiction.


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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