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.

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Friday, March 11, 2022

FUGUES: a common symptom of multiple personality


“Multiple personality is the ultimate dissociative disorder… Patients do not, however, usually first present with complaints directly referable to dissociation.  On the contrary, in many cases it requires several months or more before the patient will begin to discuss these symptoms with the therapist.  Amnesia or ‘time loss’ is the single most common dissociative symptom in MPD (multiple personality disorder) patients.  The NIMH (National Institute of Mental Health) survey study found that the most commonly reported dissociative symptoms in MPD patients were as follows: amnesias (98%), fugue episodes (55%)” (1, p. 59)…


“Fugue-like experiences are common in MPD.  They range from minifugues, in which the patient loses only brief amounts of time and travels short distances, to extensive fugues, in which the patient may ‘wake up’ in another state or country.  In most cases, it is the host personality who ‘comes to’ and is baffled by the situation” (1, p. 77).


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

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