“The New Husband” by Brian O’Rourke: TWINS (identical or evil, and PARTS as INADVERTENT metaphors for multiple personality (a.k.a. dissociative identity disorder)

TWINS: “We looked alike…When we were kids, Christopher used to pretend to be me, Brent says” (1, pp. 148-149.)

Comment: Since alternate personalities in multiple personality share the same body, they look alike when they come “out” and take control of behavior, like identical twins; so “twins” may be used as a metaphor for multiple personality. And since some alternate personalities may be “persecutors” (2. p. 108), an “evil twin” may also be a metaphor for multiple personality.

PARTS: “Am I really going through with this? Part of me thinks I should wake up at my regular time tomorrow and head into the office” (1. p .40).

Comment: In the early stage of treatment for multiple personality, a sensitive therapist may use “parts” as a euphemism for alternate personalties (2, p. 92), since persons with multiple personality who have not yet been diagnosed tend to think of the thoughts and feelings of their alternate personalities, not as identified with their “I,” but as associated with one of their “parts.”

INADVERTENT: Why is “multiple personality” never explicitly mentioned in this novel? Probably because the novelist did not intend to raise the issue, which may reflect his own “multiple personality trait,” a theme of this blog.

1. Brian R. O’Rourke. The New Husband. Inkubator Books, 2023.

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

“I Am WE, My Life with Multiple Personalities” a memoir by Christine Pattillo and the Gang

Christine Pattillo’s memoir, published by her in 2014, is a deep dive into a psychology that most people do not have, but which, according to this blog, many fiction writers do have, in a milder, creative form, which I call “multiple personality trait.”

 “Chasing The BOOGEYMAN” by Richard Chizmar: Author's Note

 “…Now, as many writers will tell you, some stories are born prematurely; you might have the skeleton of a decent idea and perhaps even a main character in mind, but all the rest…is missing. Of course, many other stories are birthed plump and healthy; in these cases, all the major plot points are in place, the complete roster of characters are present and ring true in your heart, and all that’s left to do is to connect the dots…Still others…are born fully formed, as if merely buried in a mound of sand that needs only to be brushed away in order to discover the entirety of the story—crackling with life and energy and wonder—underneath. Chasing the Boogeyman was like that for me—just waiting there beneath the surface. Fully formed, brimming with mystery, and chock-full of surprises” (1, p. 319).

Comment: Richard Chizmar says he doesn’t remember creating “the entirety of the story,” except for brushing away a “mound of sand” covering it.

So who, then, wrote this novel? It was the author’s creative alternate personalities, for whose writing process he has a memory gap (a cardinal symptom of his mentally-well version of multiple personality): "multiple personality trait," the theme of this blog.

1. Richard Chizmar. Chasing the Boogeyman. New York, Gallery Books, 2021/2022.

“Hooked” by Emily McIntire: James (a.k.a. “Hook”) is described as "a dichotomy" and a “Jekyll and Hyde personality,” but multiple personality, per se, is never mentioned

“He’s a dichotomy, threatening my life in one breath and being a gentleman in the next. It’s terrifying how he can do both so flawlessly, as if they’re integral parts of him…It tosses everything I’ve ever been taught about good and evil out the window until it skews and blurs in my brain" (1, p. 214).

“Ugh! I explode, anger scorching through my insides, exhausted from his hot and cold act. “You are so fucking insane!…his Jekyll and Hyde personality…” (1, pp. 231-232).

Comment: This novel is a contemporary literary example of why people think multiple personality is rare: Even a bestselling author who built a whole novel around it, doesn’t explicitly mention “multiple personality.”

1.Emily McIntire. Hooked. Bloom Books, Sourcebooks, 2021/2022. 

"Wicked" by Gregory Maguire: Author's reason for Wickedness is a religious explanation for multiple personality

“When goodness removes itself, the space it occupied corrodes and becomes evil, and maybe splits apart and multiplies…”

“ 'Well I wouldn’t know an evil thing if it fell on me,' said Galinda..."

" 'But they believe in evil still,' said Galinda with a yawn. 'Isn’t that funny, that the deity is passé but the attributes and implications of deity linger---' "

“ 'I am about to sleep, because this is profoundly boring to me,' Galinda said, but Elphaba was grinning from ear to ear" (1, p. 97).

1. Gregory Maguire. Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. London. Headline Review. 1995/2024. 

2. Michiko Kakutani's 1995 [Negative] New York Times Book Review of Wicked.

https://www.nytimes.com/1995/10/24/books/books-of-the-times-let-s-get-this-straight-glinda-was-the-bad-one.html

“Hero for the Holidays” by Maisey Yates: Inadvertent multiple personality

“Standing next to the horse now, he looked at ease. In his natural element. And he was showing her [Fia Sullivan], in a thousand different ways, that he was actually an amazing father.

  “Maybe he would have been a good one the whole time.

Maybe the problem was you” (1, p. 214).

“He appreciated Fia in that moment on a level he hadn’t yet.

For her intuition as a mother.

“She had it all along, you just didn’t appreciate it when it conflicted with what you wanted” (1, p. 237).

Problem: Italics indicate a third-person response in the character’s mind to what the character had just thought. But since there is no omniscient narrator in this novel, who makes those italicized third-person responses?

Comment: Perhaps the author has “multiple personality trait,” discussed in this blog, and it includes an alternate personality who sometimes comments on the author’s thoughts; and so, the author, inadvertently, gave that kind of alternate personality to two of her characters.

1. Maisey Yates. Hero for the Holidays. Toronto, Canary Street Press, 2024. 

 “Martyr!” By Kaveh Akbar: Protagonist’s Unlabeled Multiple-Personality Issues in both Creative Writing and Intimacy

—“Cyrus was a good poet when he wrote, but he rarely actually wrote. Before getting sober, Cyrus didn’t write so much as he drank about writing, describing booze as essential to his process, ‘nearly sacramental’–he really said it like that—in the way it ‘opened his mind to the hidden voice’ beneath the mundane ‘argle-bargle of the every-day.’ Of course, when he drank, he rarely did anything else but drink. ‘First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you!’ Cyrus would announce proudly to a room, to a bar, forgetting from whom he’d lifted the line.”

“In sobriety, he endured long periods of writer’s block, or more accurately, writer’s ambivalence. Writer’s antipathy” (1, p. 10).

“Getting sober means having to figure out how to spend twenty-four hours a day. It means building an entirely new personality" (1, p. 271).

Comment: The “hidden voice” sounds like the voice of a creative-writing alternate personality who can take over whenever the regular personality is subdued by alcohol. Of course, writing will be impaired if the person gets too drunk.

—“Cyrus just ended up with people, their gender rarely figuring significantly into his interest” (1, p. 151).

Comment: “At least half of all MPD patents [also have] cross-gender alternate personalities” (2, p. 110).

1. Kaveh Akbar. Martyr!  New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 2024.

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

“Shred Sisters” by Betsy Lerner: NO Multiple Personality

Comment: The older sister probably has a Mood Disorder, not multiple personality (a.k.a. dissociative identity disorder), which is a dissociative disorder, not an affective or mood disorder.

1. Betsy Lerner. Shred Sisters. New York, Grove Press, 2024. 

“Ghosts” by Dolly Alderton: Max disappears after declaring his love for Nina—he “ghosts” her—Later, both may have features of multiple-personality, but the author does not label it

“There was daftness that I shared with Joe, and a seriousness that I shared with Max. Both were parts of me and both were true, but both seemed so in conflict with each opposing representative present. I hadn’t anticipated that this merging of people meant this merging of selves—it made me think anxiously about myself in a way that was unfamiliar (1, p. 102).

“Only one part of me remained in my skin while other Ninas detached and circulated in the room. There was one who was a spectator of the clawing and clinging; who couldn’t believe Max was inside my house and inside me…One Nina rejoiced, another one was scared. Another Nina examined him…(1, p. 244).

Comment: "Parts” of Nina and multiple Ninas are treated as a kind of psychology familiar to the author, suggesting the author may have multiple personality trait, but not think of it in such terms.

1. Dolly Alderton. Ghosts. New York, Vintage Books, 2022.

“The Real Wizard of Oz: The Life and Times of L. Frank Baum by Rebecca Loncraine: Biography Suggests Baum had Multiple-Personality Trait

“Sky Island was a follow-up to The Sea Fairies that came out in 1912. Trot and Cap’n Bill fly by magic umbrella to an island in the clouds. The island is more vaporous and less concrete than Baum’s other worlds, and the characters that inhabit it…aren’t particularly compelling. But the island enforces a dreadful form of punishment that is the most vivid thing about the story. Those who break the laws of Sky Island are butchered in half: “they stand you under a big knife, which drops and slices you in two…then they match half of you to another person who has likewise been sliced.” You have been “patched.” “It’s a terrible punishment"; the patched body doesn’t know which half is their original self and which isn’t. They are left divided, incoherent, working one half against the other. Baum’s storytelling mind had been splintered into numerous voices, which often wrote tales against one another—the gung-ho, chauvinistic fortune-hunting stories for boys were morally at odds with the Oz books, for instance. Perhaps Baum was aware of his divided, inconsistent nature” (1, p. 247). 

1. Rebecca Loncraine. The Real Wizard of Oz. New York, Gotham Books, 2009. 

“The Secrets of Midwives” by Sally Hepworth: Features of Multiple Personality (a.k.a. “dissociative identity")

— Memory Gaps related to alcohol (1, p. 274) or getting pregnant

— Metaphors of psychological self-dividedness; a character’s “parts”

— Compartmentalized Chapters and no omniscient point-of-view

Comment: Most people do not have prominent memory gaps, even with alcohol. They have facets, not “parts” (a euphemism for alternate personalities); and their regular personality has an omniscient point-of-view for its own stories.

1. Sally Hepworth. The Secrets of Midwives. New York, St. Martin’s Griffin, 2015. 

“Deliverance” by James Dickey: Author has dialogues between different components of himself in a multiple-personality creative process

“I may not have had everything to do with this—with creating this—I said to myself in a silent voice that was different from my usual silent voice, but I have had something to do with it. Never before had I had such a powerful sense of being in a place I had created” (1, p. 14)…

“I think,” I said, “that we’ll never get out of this gorge alive.”

Did I say that? I thought. Yes, dream man said, you did. You said it and you believe it” (1, p. 138).

 “What can we do?”

 “We can do three things,” I said, and some other person began to tell me what they were…

  “I liked hearing the sound of my voice in the mountain speech, especially in the dark; it sounded like somebody who knew where he was and knew what he was doing…” (1, p. 140).

Comment: Creative process has involved internal dialogues among alternate personalities.

1. James Dickey. Deliverance. New York, Mariner Classics, 1970/2023.

“Melania” (post 2) a memoir by Melania Trump: Why no further mention of her striving “inner voice”?

Melania’s “inner voice” had urged her to “strive for more" (1, p. 34), but the memoir ends when her husband, Donald J. Trump, loses reelection and is almost assassinated, which temporarily stifles her verbal, striving, alternate personality.

Melania reminds me of the classic multiple-personality novel, Trilby, by George Du Maurier (2) in which the title character, like Melania, had worked as a model before she met charismatic Svengali.

1. Melania Trump. Melania. Skyhorse Publishing, 2024.

2. George Du Maurier. Trilby. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1998.

“Melania” (post 1) a memoir by Melania Trump: Her “inner voice”

“I was living confidently in a foreign land, completely independent and self -reliant. It was a bold move to venture to New York, but it was a risk worth taking. While I could have settled for a comfortable career in Slovenia, Milan, or Paris, my inner voice urged me to strive for more. My journey to New York was a testament to my firm determination, courage, and resilience" (1, p. 34).

Comment: “Inner voice” could merely mean her private thoughts, but could also refer to a recurrent rational voice that she hears in her head. For further discussion of the possibilities, search “voice” and “voices" in this blog.

1. Melania Trump. Melania. Skyhorse Publishing, 2024.

“The Real Psychology of the Trump Presidency” by Stanley Renshon: Because Trump “contains multitudes," he knows how voters feel

Stanley Renshon is a professor of Political Science and a certified psychoanalyst. His Epigraph at the front of this 555-page nonfiction book (1) quotes the poet Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself: “I am large; I contain multitudes,” a metaphor for empathy and multiple personality, although the book’s index does not reference “multiple personality.”

Comment: The above makes me suspect that Trump has multiple personality trait, a mentally-well version of multiple personality, and that his electability is based on the feeling of many voters that he knows how they feel, because the multitude he contains includes people like them.

1. Stanley Renshon. The Real Psychology of the Trump Presidency. Palgrave Macmillan, 2020.

“What Have We Done” by Alex Finlay: This novel is Compartmentalized like the mind of a person with “Multiple Personality Trait”

If an author who was aware of having “multiple personality trait” were to submit his new novel for publication, he might ask his agent and editor to see “what WE" — his multiple personalities — have done.

In a chapter titled “JENNA" (1, p. 113), the name of one of the main characters, it says that she had coped in her life by using “compartmentalization, denial, the stuff that got her through" (1, p. 114).

Indeed, most every chapter in this novel is compartmentalized according to the name of its main character and point in history, just as each alternate personality of a person with multiple personality has its own name and the times it has been most active in the person’s life.

Comment: Since I suspect that most novelists have “multiple personality trait” (see past posts), I speculate that more novels in the past would have had this format if publishers had permitted it, and if readers had not objected to it. And I wonder whether readers who most enjoy this format have multiple personality trait, too.

1. Alex Finlay. What Have We Done. New York, Minotaur Books, 2023. 

Believed Lies in Politics, Fiction, & Multiple Personality 

1. Bill Adair. Beyond the Big Lie: The Epidemic of Political Lying, Why Republicans Do it More, and How it could Burn Down our Democracy. New York, Atria, 2024.

2. Marjorie Taylor, Sara D. Hodges, Adèle Kohányi. “The Illusion of Independent Agency: Do Adult Fiction Writers Experience Their Characters as Having Minds of Their Own?” Imagination, Cognition and Personality, Vol. 22(4) 361-380, 2002-2003.

https://pages.uoregon.edu/hodgeslab/files/Download/Taylor%20Hodges%20Kohanyi_2003.pdf

3. Frank W. Putnam, MD. Diagnosis and Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder. New York, The Guilford Press, 1989, pp. 78-81.

Donald Trump’s “alternative facts,” pseudonyms, and false or misleading statements

His use of pseudonyms may have been nothing more than a deceptive tactic, but could suggest a tendency toward multiple personality, since the names of alternate personalities are pseudonyms.

1.Wikipedia. “Alternative facts.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_facts

2. Wikipedia. “Pseudonyms used by Donald Trump.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudonyms_used_by_Donald_Trump

3. Wikipedia. “False or misleading statements by Donald Trump.”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_or_misleading_statements_by_Donald_Trump

"Final Girls” by Riley Sager: The last survivor of a murder spree has “Dissociative amnesia,” (1, p. 9) dissociative identity, (1, p. 213) and barely recognizes herself in the mirror (1, p. 252)

“Detective Carmen Hernandez is smartly dressed in a gray blazer and red blouse.The bracelet wrapped around her right wrist clicks as she takes a seat. A dozen charms dangle from the sterling silver…A bolder version of me would try to steal it. I imagine looking into the charms and seeing a dozen different versions of myself” (1, p. 213).

Comment: “Dissociative Amnesia” (1, p. 9). and memory gaps are major symptoms of multiple personality (a.k.a. Dissociative Identity Disorder), along with different subjective versions of the person (alternate personalities).

“A flight attendant snaps me awake as we make our descent into New York…I look out the window, the night sky and the plane’s interior lights turning it into an oval mirror. I barely recognize the reflection staring back at me. I can’t remember the last time I did” (1. p. 252).

Comment: “MPD” patients often report seeing themselves as different people when they look into a mirror” (2, p. 62).

1. Riley Sager. Final Girls. New York, Dutton, 2017.

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

“The Night Guest” (1) by Icelandic novelist Hildur Knútsdóttir: Hint to nature of “night guest,” which is never explicitly stated in the novel

Hint

“Somnambulism [sleepwalking] is not uncommon in adult victims of MPD. Patients frequently have the experience of waking up in the morning and finding evidence that they were busy during the night, although they do not remember anything. They may find drawings, notes, poems, relocated furniture, discarded clothing, or other evidence that they have been up and busy. If this is a common life experience for a patient, there is an excellent chance that he or she has MPD” (2, p. 81).

Comment: Since “multiple personality” (a.k.a. dissociative identity) is never explicitly mentioned in this novel, the reader still has to understand what is going on.

1. Hildur Knútsdóttir. The Night Guest. Trans. from Icelandic by Mary Robinette Kowal. New York, Tor Nightfire, 2021

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

“The Guest List” by Lucy Foley: Meaning of Voices and Parts

Jules, bride-to-be, thinks that the setting for her marriage is perfect: “Everything is going to be perfect” (1, p. 16).

However, using the literary convention of italics for a voice in the head, a voice in her head advises her: “Don’t think about the note, Jules.”

Jules agrees: "I will not think about the note (that she found in her letter box three weeks ago) that…“told me not to marry Will. To call it off,” (1, p. 16).

Comment: Conversations with rational (but not infallible) voices in the head—voices of alternate personalities—are often found in multiple personality. But since Jules is not labelled as having multiple personality, the above may reflect the novelist’s psychology, a creative literary asset I call “multiple personality trait.” Search it in this blog and see below:

Author’s afterword: The author’s reference to “a sneaky little part of me that’s always on the lookout for inspiration” (1, p. 3 “About the book”) may refer to a creative alternate personality in her “multiple personality trait.” 

1. Lucy Foley. The Guest List. New York, William Morrow, 2020.