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.

MPD Textbooks: — Frank W. Putnam, MD. Diagnosis and Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) (a.k.a. Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), New York, The Guilford Press, 1989. —James G. Friesen, PhD. Uncovering the Mystery of MPD, (includes discussion of demonic possession) Eugene, Oregon, Wipf and Stock Publishers,1997.

Wednesday, March 5, 2025

“Dangerous Minds” by Priscilla Masters: Gratuitous Symptoms of Multiple Personality


“From deep inside, her naughty voice spoke up in her own defense.

“But she still got herself murdered, didn't she?” (1, p. 20).


Comment: An italicized voice inside the protagonist’s head, suggestive of an opinionated alternate personality.


“For someone like Barclay, a voice growled inside her, there is no ‘enough.’ "(1, p. 98).

Comment: As above.


“Then she gathered herself up and continued in a voice she hardly recognized as her own: prim, tight-mouthed, business-like…Heart tumbling over head, head tumbling over heart. She was dizzy, then that voice came out again” (1, p. 129).

Comment: The alternate personality takes over and she speaks in its voice.


“She [her alternate personality] spoke only to her reflection in the bathroom mirror [her regular personality] What are you waiting for, Claire…” (1, p. 133).


Comment: Since no character in this novel is labelled as having multiple personality, the above quotations are probably inadvertent reflections of the author’s normal, creative version of multiple personality disorder, which I call “multiple personality trait.”


1. Priscilla Masters. Dangerous Minds. Surrey England, Severn House, 2016. 

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