“The Alchemist" by Paulo Coelho: How did he write it in Two Weeks?

"Is it true you wrote it (1) in four weeks?"

“Two weeks. The book was already written in my soul" (2).

Comment: I infer from my study of other writers in this blog that the book was probably already written by his storytelling alternate personalities.

1. Paulo Coelho. The Alchemist. Trans. by Alan R. Clarke. 25th Anniversary Edition. New York HarperOne, 1993.

2. Hannah Pool.The Guardian Interview of Paulo Coelho, https://web.archive.org/web/20161128235051/https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/mar/19/paulo-coelho-interview 

“In Search of Hidden Treasures: Our Journey of Understanding Dissociative Identity Disorder” by Ria Van Zanten: Written after she had found that “Jennifer” was troubled, not by Demons, but by “Parts”

“As the minister walked down the aisle, Jennifer sat in her seat with her fist tightly clenched, just like she did at home, while we prayed for her. When he walked down the aisle, many demons would manifest, and many people were delivered. However, nothing changed in Jennifer…The minister started to talk about the difference between demons and dissociations, how some people had dissociated parts, and that the parts were not demons. He told us a story about how, while trying to cast out a demon one day, he came across a part he had assumed was a demon. The part said, “I am not leaving, as I am a part of this person.” This statement gave him pause, and he then researched what this could mean…

He spoke about a book that had helped him understand what a ‘part’ of a person meant. We bought the book called ¨Uncovering the Mystery of MPD” by Dr. James G. Friesen (2). We were excited to have an answer for Jennifer (1, pp. 12-13).

1. Ria Van Zanten. In Search of Hidden Treasures. Canada, Five Arrows Media, 2024.

2. Dr. James G. Frieson. Uncovering the Mystery of MPD. Eugene, Oregon, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1997. 

“The Promise” by Damon Galgut: Discrepancies Between Different Editions and Between Reality and What a Character Sees in The Mirror (a symptom of MPD)

Small girl looking at her mother’s things. She knows all of it by heart, how many steps from the door to the bed, where the light switch is for the lamp, the swirly orange pattern in the carpet like the onset of a headache, etc., etc. Out the corner of her eye she thinks she sees Ma’s face appear in the mirror, but when she looks directly it’s gone. Instead she can smell her mother, or a mix of smells she thinks of as her mother, but are actually the traces of recent events, involving puke, incense, blood medicine, perfume and an underlying dark note, perhaps the smell of the sickness itself. Exhaled by the walls, hovering in the air.

She’s not here.

Her sister Astrid speaking, who has somehow spotted her and followed.

They took her away.

I know that. I saw.

Comment: In the above passage, quotation marks and complete speaker identification are missing in this edition (1 p. 34).

This edition has 269 pages, but today’s Wikipedia on this novel uses a different publisher with 242 pages, so everyone is not reading the same edition.

Comment on Mirror: The character sees a face in the mirror that is not there, which is a symptom of multiple personality disorder (a.k.a. dissociative identity disorder) (2, p. 62). But since no character is given that diagnosis, the mirror symptom may reflect the author's creative asset, Multiple Personality Trait.

1. Damon Galgut. The Promise. New York, Europa Editions, This edition, 2022.

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

“Medea’s Curse” by Anne Buist: Murder Mystery Starts with Dissociative Identity Disorder (Multiple Personality) and then gets complicated

"This case, it is Dissociative Identity Disorder.”

“On what evidence?”

“We are not lawyers, Dr.King. Not evidence—history and mental state examination.”
“All right then, on what history and mental state findings?”

“Her postings on Facebook. This is most certainly dissociation. The vagueness and memory lapses are classical…”

“I’m not saying Georgia doesn’t dissociate, but she’s putting on an act” (1, p. 22).

Kirkus Review: “Overplotted and overdramatic; Buist’s heroine never seems to have a normal half-hour. But readers who aren’t put off by the unsparing accounts of women placed in extremis by themselves or wicked men will cheer the arrival of an authentic dragon slayer” (2).

1. Anne Buist. Medea’s Curse. London, Legend Press, 2016. 

2. Wikipedia. “Anne Buist.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Buist

3. Kirkus Review. https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/anne-buist/medeas-curse/ 

“The Thursday Murder Club” by Richard Osman: Both “Deft and Daft”(2)

 Chapter 24  

“With the lights of the village turning out, Elizabeth opens up her appointment diary and attempts today’s question: What was the registration number of Gwen Talbot’s daughter-in-law’s new car?

   “She approves of this question. Not the make of the car; that was too easy. Not the color…But the registration number—that takes genuine recall. As she has done so often before, in a different life, usually in a different country and different century, Elizabeth shuts her eyes and zooms in. She sees it immediately, or does she hear it? It is both; her brain is telling her what she sees." 

“JL17 BCH” (1, p. 86).

Comment: If she is being advised by her brain, is the author implying that Elizabeth (and the author?) hear voices of helpful alternate personalities? What is the reader to make of the above? Even a British reviewer seems to have found Osman’s novel confusing: “Osman’s plotting is both deft and daft in equal measure” (2).

1. Richard Osman. The Thursday Murder Club. New York, Penguin Books, 2020

2. Alfred Hickling. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/oct/03/the-thursday-club-by-richard-osman-review-cosy-caper 

“Panopticon” (post 1) by Jenni Fagan: Protagonist’s Probable Multiple Personality Symptoms of Memory Gap, Seeing Faces and Hearing Voices

“Anais Hendricks, fifteen, can’t remember what happened, but across town a policewoman lies in a coma and Anais is covered in blood” (1, Back Cover).

“I get voices in my head and see faces no one else sees (mostly, but not always, when I’m tripping)” (1, p. 24).

Comment: A traumatic childhood in both the author and protagonist raises the possibility of multiple personality. I don’t know of any review of this book that considers this psychological possibility. But I argue in this blog that many novelists have creative "multiple personality trait.” 

1. Jenni Fagan. The Panopticon. New York, Hogarth, 2012. 

“The Panopticon” (post 2) by Jenni Fagan: Homeless Childhoods of Both Author (1) and Protagonist (2, Back Cover)

1. Wikipedia. “Jenni Fagan”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenni_Fagan

2. Jenni Fagan. The Panopticon. New York, Hogarth, 2012. 

“The Heart is a Lonely Hunter” by Carson McCullers: Protagonist says she has a hundred hidden parts and pieces (dissociative identity)

“She [“Mick”] had always kept things to herself. That was one sure truth…

“She put her head on her knees and tied knots in the strings of her tennis shoes. What would Portia say if she knew that always there had been one person after another?  And every time it was like some part of her would bust in a hundred pieces.

“But she had always kept it to herself and no person had ever known” (1, p. 62).

Comment: Above implies hidden dissociative identity (a.k.a. multiple personality) of the protagonist and that the author may have had a creative version. Dissociative identity is usually hidden until diagnosed.

1. Carson McCullers. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. New York, The Modern Library, 1940/1993. 

Novelists Hear Voices, A Textbook Symptom of Multiple Personality, plus an example from the Introduction to a Novel’s 20th Anniversary Edition by Wally Lamb

—Psychiatric Textbook on Communication With Alternate Personalities

“…Another form of contact is through inner vocalizations. The patient may ‘hear’ the alternate personality speak as an inner voice within, often as one of the ‘voices’ that the patient has been hearing for years” (1, p. 94).

—A Well-known Kind of Experience of Many Novelists

“Delores Price first came to me as a voice. I was in the shower after an early morning run, hustling to get ready for my teaching day at the high school where I’d worked for the past nine years. “Well, the dork just left me,” the voice said. “Good riddance.” She was unnamed, not yet visible. But in those eight words, she sounded wounded, irreverent, and funny. I liked her immediately” (2, p. XVI).

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

2. Wally Lamb. She’s Come Undone. New York, ATRIA/Washington Square Press, 1992.

Comment: It is fairly common for novelists to hear the voices of, and relate to, their characters, as though they were persons with minds of their own, the essence of alternate personalities. Neither patients nor novelists will insist that these are real people, because neither novel-writing nor multiple personality is a psychosis.

“One of Us Knows” (post 2) A Thriller by Alyssa Cole

“In movies about DID, switches between headmates are comically dramatic and outsiders can easily tell who’s who. In reality, we were created as a defense mechanism, and the best defense is keeping our multiplicity secret—even from one another. It’s not as hard as people think; singlets have changing moods and demeanors too. The average person’s changeability is our camouflage" (1, p. 124).

1. Alyssa Cole. One of Us Knows. New York, William Morrow/HarperCollins, 2024. 

Concluding Comment added 7/22/25: I finished the novel. It appears that this novelist’s creativity found a DID format congenial.

"One of Us Knows” (post 1) A Thriller by Alyssa Cole (1) whose protagonist is explicitly diagnosed as having Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) (a.k.a. Multiple PersonalityDisorder (MPD)

Back Cover: “Years after a breakdown and a diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder derailed her career as a historical preservationist, Kenetria Nash and her alters [alternate personalities] have been given a second chance they can’t refuse: a position as resident caretaker of a historic home on an isolated island in [New York’s] Hudson River (2, Back Cover).

In her Acknowledgments, the author thanks "Calion Winter, the DID accuracy consultant for this story. His early advice about potential plot missteps…were invaluable" (2, p. 336).

Comment: I hope to start reading this “Thriller” in the near future. I don’t know Calion Winter, the author’s multiple personality consultant.

1. Wikipedia. “Alyssa Cole.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alyssa_Cole

2. Alyssa Cole. One of Us Knows. New York, William Morrow/HarperCollins, 2024.

“The Gathering” (post 2) by Anne Enright: Veronica says “there is a part of me that wants to be hated…There must be.”

“Of course, Tom would say he never hated me, that he loved me all along. But I know hating when I see it. I know it, because there is a part of me that wants to be hated, too. There must be” (1, p. 180).

Comment: A psychological “part” that has a mind of its own is an alternate personality. Search “parts” in this blog for discussion in past posts.

1. Anne Enright. The Gathering. New York, Grove Press, 2007. 

“The Gathering” (winner of 2007 Man Booker Prize) by Anne Enright (post 1): Veronica, whose large Irish family is gathering in Dublin after the death of her brother, Liam, is puzzled by her memory gap for their past conversation

“He was the one who talked most, but I didn’t mind. I wish I could remember what exactly he said, but conversation doesn’t stick to my memory of Liam…We talked as brother and sister might…It was summer, and sometimes we were still talking when the sun came up — but I have no idea what these conversations were. I put a phrase into the bedroom air, like ‘Joan Armatrading’, and I think, We would never talk about her. [note use of italics] I suppose we talked about family…What else — quantum mechanics? (1, p. 118).

Comment: Note that the author has italicized “We would never talk about her.”  As discussed in past posts, novelists may use italics to indicate voices heard in the head, as opposed to merely silent thought. And voices heard in the head may be voices of alternate personalities (2, p. 62, 94).

And if a novel has no characters who are labelled as having multiple personality, any symptoms of multiple personality may reflect what I call an author’s normal, creative, high-functioning “multiple personality trait.” 

Added same day: I will have further comment when I finish this novel. Maybe it will clarify itself.

1. Anne Enright. The Gathering. New York, Grove Press, 2007.

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

“Mansfield Park” by Jane Austen: Fanny Price’s Varieties

Comment: For my view of the author, Jane Austen, based on her more popular novels, search “Jane Austen” in this blog. In Mansfield Park, the following sentence is relevant:

“Poor Fanny’s mind was thrown into the most distressing of all its varieties” (2, p. 337).

1. Wikipedia. “Fanny Price.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanny_Price

2. Jane Austen. Mansfield Park. London, Penguin Classics, 1996/1814 

“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).