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.

MPD Textbooks: — Frank W. Putnam, MD. Diagnosis and Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) (a.k.a. Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), New York, The Guilford Press, 1989. —James G. Friesen, PhD. Uncovering the Mystery of MPD, (includes discussion of demonic possession) Eugene, Oregon, Wipf and Stock Publishers,1997.

Saturday, August 9, 2025

"Adultery” by Paulo Coelho: Protagonist’s and Author's Multiple Personality?


“The way I behave with him is always a surprise. Oral sex, sensible advice, that kiss in the park. I seem like another person. Who is this woman I become whenever I’m with Jacob? (1, p. 55).


“When I finally finish my housework each evening, an endless dialogue starts in my head (1, p. 67).


“I need to know who I’ve become, because I am that person. It’s not something external (1, p. 70).


“On the one side I’m a villain, who goes to a campus to incriminate an innocent person without understanding the motive behind my hatred. On the other, I’m a mother who takes loving care of her family…

“Do you remember Jekyll and Hyde?” (1, p. 136).


Comment: Since multiple personality, per se, is not explicitly invoked for any character, it may reflect a trait of the author. I don’t know if this is present in any of the author’s other novels.


1. Paulo Coelho. Adultery. Trans. By Margaret Jull Costa and Zoë Perry. New York, Vintage International, 2015. 

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