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.

Tuesday, April 15, 2025

“Authoritarian Nightmare” by John W. Dean and Bob Altemeyer: President Trump may have “Multiple Personality Trait,” which is Not a Mental Illness


In the past, I have read of Mr. Trump’s use of pseudonyms (1), possibly used merely as a joke, which were not sufficient to diagnose multiple personality disorder, especially since he was too high-functioning to be considered mentally ill. However, that left open the possibility that he had what I call “multiple personality trait,” which is not a psychiatric diagnosis, but merely an imaginative, creative asset which I suspect is present in many novelists.


Recently, in Authoritarian Nightmare by John W. Dean and Bob Altemeyer, I was interested to learn that President Trump has a history of referring to “Trump” in the third person, as though he sometimes thought of “Trump” as a separate person or alternate personality:


“It could not be clearer. Every day, in every way, on every issue, Trump now wanted all GOP senators to support what “Trump” (notice the third person) wanted” (2, p. 93).


1. Wikipedia. “Pseudonyms used by Donald Trump.”

2. John W. Dean and Bob Altemeyer. Authoritarian Nightmare: The Ongoing Threat of Trump’s Followers. Brooklyn, Melville House, 2020. 

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