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.

Tuesday, February 6, 2024

“The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket” by Edgar Allan Poe (post 1): Protagonist is in “awe” when he looks in a mirror, a symptom of multiple personality


“As I viewed myself in a fragment of looking-glass… I was so impressed with a sense of vague awe at my appearance…” (1, p. 80).


Comment: The protagonist-narrator couches the above in a paragraph that makes it seem like a person could be in awe of his own appearance in a mirror, but the word “awe” should be used in phrases like “awe of God” (2); that is, awe of someone else. Therefore, when a character looks in a mirror and feels like he is seeing someone else, it may be a symptom of multiple personality (3, p. 62), probably a symptom of the author’s multiple personality trait.


Search “Poe” in this blog for a past post.


1. Edgar Allan Poe. The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. New York, Penguin Books, 1838/1999.

2. Wikipedia. “Awe.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Awe

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

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