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.

— Share site with friends.

Friday, July 12, 2024

“The Talented Mr. Ripley” (post 3) by Patricia Highsmith: Memory Gaps for Two Murders are Tom Ripley’s Major Diagnostic Symptom of Multiple Personality


Text: Sometimes Ripley recalled his having murdered men on two separate occasions, but “Sometimes he could absolutely forget that he had murdered…” (1, p. 238).


Diagnostic Criteria for Multiple Personality (dissociative identity disorder)

B. “Recurrent gaps in the recall of important personal information or traumatic events that are inconsistent with ordinary forgetting” (2, p. 292).


Comment: Search “memory gaps” in this blog to see past posts on this major diagnostic symptom of multiple personality disorder.


1. Patricia Highsmith. The Talented Mr. Ripley. New York, W. W. Norton & Company, 1955.

2. American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition [DSM-5]. Arlington VA, American Psychiatric Association, 2013. 

Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Thank you for taking the time to comment (whether you agree or disagree) and ask questions (simple or expert). I appreciate your contribution.

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)