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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Wednesday, July 31, 2024

“Holmes, Marple & Poe” by James Patterson: Are Holmes’ “MULTIPLE PERSONAS” merely his roles or are they his alternate personalities?


”Holmes felt the familiar thrill as he tapped a tiny hill of powder into the hollow between his curled thumb and forefinger. His heart thudded even harder. His pupils dilated. All his fight-or-flight responses were activated and firing. In some ways, this was his favorite moment. The anticipation of the rush. The delicious danger of being discovered. And the intensely heightened awareness of his multiple personas.

Business partner. Crime fighter. Drug fiend” (1, p. 122).


Comment: I read “multiple personas” as a euphemism for alternate personalties. Otherwise, the above is much ado about nothing.


1. James Patterson (and Brian Sitts). New York, Little Brown, 2024. 

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