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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Tuesday, May 20, 2025

“The New Couple in 5B” by Lisa Unger: Back Cover sets scene for this novel, plus a sample of Author’s dissociative, multiple-personality trait

"A couple inherits an apartment with a spine-tingling past in this haunting and propulsive thriller” (1, Back Cover).


“The room is dim, though it’s past noon..And I can’t move…my head is heavy on the pillow…There’s a part of me that wants to get up. She’s in there, the real me, the strong one, screaming, pull yourself together!” (1, p. 223).


Comment: The protagonist has “parts” (alternate personalities) and speaks with an italicized voice in her head. Search “parts” and “italicized” in this blog for their discussion in other novels.


1. Lisa Unger. The New Couple in 5B. Park Row Books, 2024.

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