“Hangsaman” by Shirley Jackson: Foreword by Francine Prose, who wishes she had included this novel in her college literature course on “Strange Books”

“The everyday reality of Jackson’s teenage protagonist is repeatedly interrupted by bursts of awareness and alienation so complex that it would be reductive to call them ‘out of body’ moments” (Foreword, 1, p. x).

“Natalie Waite, who was seventeen years old but who felt that she had been truly conscious only since she was about fifteen, lived in an odd corner of a world of sound and sight past the daily voices of her father and mother and their incomprehensible actions. For the past two years—since, in fact, she had turned around suddenly one bright morning and seen from the corner of her eye a person called Natalie, existing, charted, inescapably located on a spot of ground…and most obscurely alive—she had lived completely by herself, allowing not even her father access to the farther places of her mind. She visited strange countries, and the voices of their inhabitants were constantly in her ear…

“…Natalie was leaving for her first year in college a week after her brother went back to high school…sometimes it seemed a matter of minutes slipping by so swiftly that there would never be time to approach college with appropriate consideration, to form a workable personality to take along…(1, pp. 3-4).

Comment: Hearing voices in her head and creating adaptive (“workable”) personalities probably reflect the high-functioning multiple personality of a great author (Shirley Jackson), what I call “multiple personality trait” (not disorder).

Added 6/27/25: Search "Shirley Jackson" for major past posts.

1. Shirley Jackson. Hangsaman. New York, Penguin (Penguin Classics), 1951. 

“Consider Yourself Kissed” by Jessica Stanley: The Novel’s Phrase, “a critical internal voice” Implies Unacknowledged Multiple Personality

“By midafternoon she was exhausted, famished, and overwhelmed by a critical internal voice telling her, not incorrectly, she’d wasted her entire day” (1, p. 13).

Comment: I have not read every page of this novel, which may embarrass me, since the novel has gotten rave reviews, and I was very interested in the above sentence—including “a critical internal voice telling her”—which, perhaps inadvertently, suggests the voice of an alternate personality. But neither the novel nor any of its rave reviews explicitly mentions the implicit multiple personality (a.k.a. dissociative identity) as far as I know. Search “voices” in this blog for past discussions of this symptom.

1. Jessica Stanley. Consider Yourself Kissed (a novel). New York, Riverhead Books, 2025. 

“Big Liars” by Christian L. Hart PhD and Drew A. Curtis PhD: A Book on Lying, Published by The American Psychological Association

Quote from Psychiatric Textbook (1): “Adult MPD patients will often recount that they acquired a reputation as liars in childhood” (1, p. 78).

Quote from Big Liars (2): “In an anonymous online forum, another man wrote of his 12-year-old daughter:

“She constantly lies….She has been claiming she was in a gang, stabbed someone, was pregnant, was from Sweden….We live in a rural area, there are no gangs here and she isn’t from Sweden. She most certainly hasn’t stabbed anyone. She created 15 different email accounts all with different identities on different chat apps. Each of her alter identities has bad habits, like drugs, violence, stealing or criminal behavior. I am confused and don’t know what to do.” (2, p. 47).

Comment: The child with 15 alternate identities apparently has multiple personality (a.k.a. (dissociative identity disorder), but “Big Liars” doesn’t state the diagnosis.

1. Frank W. Putnam, MD. Diagnosis and Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder. New York, The Guilford Press, 1989.

2. Christian L. Hart PhD and Drew A. Curtis PhD. Big Liars: What Psychological Science Tells US About Lying and How You can Avoid Being Duped. Washington, DC, American Psychological Association, 2023, APA Life Tools, 750 First Street, NE, Washington, DC20002.

“The Seal Wife” (novel) by Kathryn Harrison

Protagonist is divided into parts that have minds of their own—alternate personalities—which show the author’s tendency toward multiple personality (a.k.a. “dissociative identity)”:

“The fifth glass—he doesn’t want to swallow it. Well, he does, some of him does. His brain says swallow; his throat says no. Still who’s in charge? And he’s not sorry after he gets it down. Because this is a drunkenness that allows sublime substitutions" (1, p. 89).

Additional Comment: For reasons other than the above-noted dissociative tendencies, I tend to agree with Kirkus Reviews on this novel (2), but not with its harsh language.

1. Kathryn Harrison. The Seal Wife. New York, Random House, 2002.

2. Kirkus Reviews. "The Seal Wife" https://kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/kathryn-harrison/the-seal-wife/

“The Kiss” (post 1), a Memoir by Kathryn Harrison (1, 2)

I sent for this 1997 memoir after it was recently mentioned, favorably, in The New York Times Book Review. So far, I have read only up to the point where “the kiss” between the author and her father takes place (2), after which, she describes her attempt at denial, including her tendency toward having a memory gap, and hearing a voice in her head, two common symptoms of multiple personality (a.k.a. dissociative identity):

“Bit by bit, layer by temporizing layer, I work to obliterate the truth…My boyfriend, threatened himself by what I revealed, colludes with me in the process. Together we forget what I said, even as privately I forget what my father did. It is as simple as only denial can be. Don’t think about it, I tell myself, but it seems to require an enormous effort of will…I realize I’m in a kind of shock…my voice won’t speak the words I hear in my head…I become one of the people to whom I wouldn’t mention such a thing as my father sticking his tongue in my mouth (1, pp. 74-75).

Comment: The above is not enough for a formal diagnosis of multiple personality disorder (a.k.a. dissociative identity disorder), but most novelists—as I argue in this blog—have only a milder, higher-functioning version, which I call “multiple personality trait” (as opposed to disorder).

I will add to the above after I finish reading this memoir and, in the future, a sample of Kathryn Harrison’s novels.

1. Kathryn Harrison. The Kiss, a Memoir. New York, Bard/Avon, 1997.

2. Wikipedia. “The Kiss (memoir) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kiss_(memoir). 

Multiple Personalities, Subpersonalities, and “Parts” 

Books on treating “Multiple Personality” (1989) and “Subpersonalities” (1990) were published about the same time, but neither book referenced the other. Was that a psychiatry/psychology issue?

1. John Rowan. Subpersonalities: The People Inside Us. New York, Routledge, 1990.

2. Frank W. Putnam, MD. Diagnosis and Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder. New York, The Guilford Press, 1989.

Comment: I’ve always disliked the expression that “whereas I think like this, another part of me thinks or likes that,” since I don’t think of myself as having “parts.” I think of myself as having aspects and moods. Therapy using the concept of subpersonalities may be very helpful in selected cases, but are subpersonalities really a form of multiple personality disorder (a.k.a. dissociative identity disorder) with a less-daunting name? 

PARTS: Not everyone has had imaginary playmates, becomes a novelist, may be highly hypnotizable, is religious, or has “parts.”

Comment: What would you add to, or subtract from, that list?

“Parts Psychology” by Jay Noricks, PhD: “The idea that we all have multiple personalities, but not necessarily a disorder…may at first be shocking…”

Preface (1, pp. xi-xiii)

“The idea that we all have multiple personalities—but not [necessarily] a disorder of personalities—may at first be shocking. But the evidence for this normal multiplicity among relatively ordinary people is so powerful that even the most skeptical of readers may change their minds before finishing the book…

“Of course, some problems take many years to resolve, such as dissociative identity disorder (DID), previously labeled multiple personality disorder (MPD)…My purpose in excluding dissociative disorders is simply to avoid confusion. Otherwise it might be less clear that it is normal for people to have hidden parts of themselves…Over the last 10 years I have worked with more than 30 cases of DID and my caseload has included, at any given time, three to six clients with this diagnosis…” (1).

1. Jay Noricks, PhD. Parts Psychology (A Trauma-Based Self-State Therapy for Emotional Healing in Counseling and Psychotherapy: Case Studies in Normal Dissociation). Los Angeles, New University Press, 2011.

Comment: Multiple Personality is much more common than most people—including psychologists and psychiatrists—appreciate. Among psychiatrists who have most knowledge about multiple personality (a.k.a. dissociative identity), it is known as a disorder of “hiddenness,” except during a crisis or when the personalities are addressed by name. The regular or “host” personality often has a memory gap for the period of time that an alternate had taken over.

2. Frank W. Putnam, MD. Diagnosis and Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder. New York, The Guilford Press, 1989. 

“Parts Psychology: A Trauma-Based, Self-State Therapy with Case Studies in Normal Dissociation” by Jay Noricks PhD

In recent posts of my blog about the normal "multiple-personality trait” of many novelists—https://multiplewriters.blogspot.com/—I highlighted a recurrent issue: “parts." I then decided to search for books that addressed “parts” and “psychology,” and found Parts Psychology (1) whose subtitle describes it as “A Trauma-Based Self-State Therapy with “Case Studies in Normal Dissociation” (1). I also found No Bad Parts by Richard Schwartz, PhD, subtitled “Healing Trauma & Restoring Wholeness with The Internal Family Systems Model" (2).

Psychologists have found their own approach to issues raised in the chapter on Dissociative Disorders in the psychiatric diagnostic manual [DSM-5] (3). But there may be similarities in the psychiatric treatment (4).

1. Jay Noricks PhD. Parts Psychology. Los Angeles. New University Press, 2011.

2. Richard C. Schwartz, PhD, No Bad Parts. Boulder Colorado, Sounds True, 2021.

3. American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition [DSM-5]. Arlington VA, American Psychiatric Association, 2013, pp. 291-307. 

4. Frank W. Putnam, MD. Diagnosis and Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder. New York, The Guilford Press, 1989. 

“The Sum of my PARTS” (alternate personalities): my Memoir of Multiple Personality” (dissociative identity disorder) by Olga R. Trujillo

Comment: People who casually refer to themselves as having “parts” may have a version of multiple personality.

1. Olga R. Trujillo. The Sum of My Parts: a survivor’s story of Dissociative Identity Disorder. New Harbinger Publications, 2011.

“The Third Girl” (Molly Sutton Mysteries 1) by Nell Goddin: Molly's Parts and Voices

“Molly flopped her head back and laughed, even though some part of her noted that nothing was especially funny” (1, p. 38).

“Part of her brain knew that she was rationalizing…And there is always hope there has been no murder, the rationalizing part whispered” (1, p. 169).

(An italicized voice in her head, addresses Molly: “Right, you’re going to skip the first party in your new village…Could you be any lamer?" (1, p. 185). 

Comment: "Parts" and "Voices" in the head suggest that the author has "multiple personality trait," as discussed in many past posts of this blog.

 

1. Nell Goddin. The Third Girl (Molly Sutton Mysteries 1). Beignet Books, 2015.