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.

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Tuesday, January 14, 2025

“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.

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