“QUIET: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking” by Susan Cain

"Today Laura understands that her introversion is an essential part of who she is, and she embraces her reflective nature. The loop inside her head that accused her of being too quiet and unassuming plays much less often. Laura knows that she can hold her own when she needs to” (1, p. 10). 

Comment: “The loop inside her head…” looks like the repeated entreaties of an extroverted alternate personality, which she overcame by researching and writing this book.

1. Susan Cain. Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking. Crown, New York, 2013.

“Elon Musk” the biography by Ashlee Vance: Does Musk’s Photographic Memory Mean He Has a Normal, Exceptional, Dissociative Identity?

“'At one point, I ran out of books to read at the school library and the neighborhood library,' Musk said… 'So then, I started to read the Encyclopedia Britannica. That was so helpful. You don’t know what you don’t know. You realize there are all these things out there…'

“Elon, in fact, churned through two sets of encyclopedias—a feat that did little to help him make friends. The boy had a photographic memory, and the encyclopedias turned him into a fact factory. He came off as a classic know-it-all” (1, p. 33).

Comment: I just began this biography, and don’t know if it will ever even mention dissociative identity, previously known as “multiple personality.” Please search “photographic memory” in this blog to read my previous discussion of it’s possible relation to dissociative identity.

1. Ashlee Vance. Elon Musk. Ecco, HarperCollins, New York, 2017. 

“REGIME CHANGE: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump,” by Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan

Q. How does President Trump keep his opinions and plans secret and make the right decisions?

A. “I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain, and I’ve said a lot of things” (1, p. 35). 

“He often ran different lines in parallel—or even on triple tracks. Even with his closest aides, there were rooms within rooms and no one had entrance to them all (1. p. 41).

Comment: Why does he say he speaks with himself rather than simply that he thinks?  Apparently, he is speaking to a part of himself that is like another person; that is, one or more alternate personalities. He may have a normal, high-functioning, creative, dissociative identity.

1. Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan. Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump. New York, Simon & Schuster, 2026.

Is “A CHILDHOOD” by Harry Crews “THE BIOGRAPHY OF A PLACE,” because the author has no regular personality?

“I have never been certain of who I am” (1, p. 6). 

“I have always slipped into and out of identities as easily as other people slip into and out of their clothes. Even my voice, its inflections and rhythms, does not seem entirely my own…

“On journalism assignments during which I’ve recorded extended interviews…my own voice will inevitably become almost indistinguishable from the voice of the person with whom I’m talking by the third or fourth tape. Some natural mimic in me picks up whatever verbal tics or mannerisms it gets close to. That mimic in myself has never particularly pleased me, but has in fact bothered me more than a little” (1, p .6).

Comment: Without a regular host personality, it is not typical multiple personality. So what is it?

1. Harry Crews. A CHILDHOOD, THE BIOGRAPHY OF A PLACE, Published with a foreword by Tobias Wolff in Penguin Books, 2022.

“The Strange Case of Donald J. Trump (A Psychological Reckoning) by Prof. Dan P. McAdams) (1)

Dan P. McAdams is a Professor of Psychology, especially personality psychology (2).

The Professor adapted his book’s title from Robert Louis Stevenson’s famous novel, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1, p.1) which is commonly interpreted as related to Dissociative Identity Disorder (a.k.a. Multiple Personality), but Prof. McAdams does not make that diagnosis of Mr. Trump.

1. Dan P. McAdams. The Strange Case of Donald J. Trump. A Psychological Reckoning. New York, N.Y. Oxford University Press, 2020.

2. Wikipedia. “Dan P. McAdams. ”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_P._McAdams 

Overcoming Difficulties in DIAGNOSIS

Of Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)

by Richard P. Kluft, MD (1)

“The average patient with DID has been in the mental healthcare delivery system an average of 6.8 years and has received more than three other diagnoses, reflecting either misdiagnosis or comorbidities, before receiving an accurate diagnosis of DID (1).

“Most patients with DID, whose manifestations were generally subtle or easily concealed most of the time, exhibit “windows of diagnosability,” during which the manifestations became more overt…

“These observations are consistent with the findings of Putnam..now replicated many times, that the average patient with DID has been in the mental healthcare delivery system an average of 6.8 years and has received more than three other diagnoses, reflecting either misdiagnoses or comorbidities, before receiving an accurate diagnosis of DID…

“The typical differential diagnosis for DID includes other dissociative disorders, psychoses, affective disorders, borderline personality disorder, partial complex seizures, factitious disorders, and malingering…”

Comment: The difficulties in making this now established diagnosis are widely recognized. So please click the article below, read it, and begin to develop your own expertise.

1. Richard P. Kluft, MD. Psychiatric Annals 35:8. AUGUST 2005. Diagnosing Dissociative Identity Disorder (2005). 

Diagnosis and Treatment of Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) (a.k.a. Multiple Personality Disorder) (MPD), which is commonly hidden or camouflaged 

Comment: The standard professional training of most psychotherapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists does not give them sufficient expertise to successfully diagnose and treat most cases of Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). The following introductory references are a good beginning to learning about DID/MPD.

Introductory References

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

2. Elaine Ducharme Ph.D., ABPP.  Assessment and Treatment of Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). Camp Hill, PA. TPI Press, 2015.