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, 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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