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.

— Each time you visit, search "name index" or "subject index," choose another name or subject, and search it.

— If you read only recent posts, you miss most of what this site has to offer.

— Share site with friends.

MPD Textbooks: — Frank W. Putnam, MD. Diagnosis and Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) (a.k.a. Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), New York, The Guilford Press, 1989. —James G. Friesen, PhD. Uncovering the Mystery of MPD, (includes discussion of demonic possession) Eugene, Oregon, Wipf and Stock Publishers,1997.

Thursday, February 25, 2021

Isaac Asimov (post 2): End of Life Manifestation of Multiple Personality?


In her epilogue to his memoir, Isaac Asimov’s wife recalls “an incident from Isaac’s last week at home [he was dying of heart disease and terminal kidney failure]. Isaac couldn’t talk much, and was asleep most of the time, but once he woke up looking terribly anxious. He said to me:


“I want…I want…”

“What is it, Isaac?” I asked.

“I want…I want…”

“What do you want, darling?”

It seemed to burst out of him. “I want—Isaac Asimov!”

“Yes,” I said. “That’s you.”

Then he said wonderingly, and with triumph, “I AM Isaac Asimov!” (1, pp. 561-562).


Was this his poignant wish to be healthy and full-functioning again? Or was this one of his unnamed personalities asking for his regular, named personality, and then the regular personality’s surprised, but triumphant response?


1. Isaac Asimov. I. Asimov: A Memoir. New York, Bantam/Doubleday, 1994. 

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