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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Monday, April 21, 2025

“Losing the Atmosphere” a memoir by Vivian Conan: Memoir’s Statement on its Back Cover Includes a Multiple Personality Disorder Textbook Symptom


Back Cover:

“Vivian Conan grew up in two different worlds: Outside and Inside. Outside, she had friends, excelled in school, and was close to her cousins and brother. Inside, she saw faces that weren’t hers in her bedroom mirror…To others, her life seemed rich with work, friends music and boyfriends…But her mind and soul were filled with chaos and pain. Neither she nor her therapists could figure out why…” (1, Back Cover).)


1. Vivian Conan. Losing the Atmosphere: A Baffling Disorder, a Search for Help, and the Therapist Who Understood. New York, NY, GreenPoint Press, 2020.


Textbook Symptom:

“MPD patients often report seeing themselves as different people when they look into a mirror (2, p. 62).


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


Note: Please search author's name in this blog for additional information in my past posts.

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