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.

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Friday, May 2, 2025

“Allegedly” by Tiffany D. Jackson: Protagonist’s reputation as a LIAR can be a diagnostic feature of Multiple Personality Disorder


“…Apparent pathological lying…is one of the best diagnostic predictors…for multiple personality disorder…Adult MPD patients will often recount that they acquired a reputation as liars in childhood…This may happen to all of us at some time or other, but MPD patients will have this experience frequently in childhood and fairly often as adults. Consequently, some MPD patients will become obsessed with “truth” as adults…


“Multiples are perceived by other people as lying when they deny doing things that they were seen to do. In most instances, this is because the personality that is denying the behavior is amnesic for the actions of another personality who actually performed the actions” (2, pp. 78-79).


Comment: I don’t know how the author came to choose the theme of lying for this novel (1), which never mentions multiple personality.


1. Tiffany D. Jackson. Allegedly. New York, HarperCollins, 2017.

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

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