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.

Monday, August 25, 2025

“Altered” Book 1 of 6 in the Justin Wright Suspense Series by Rob Kaufman


Frank is a new patient of psychiatrist Justin Wright, who asks Frank what makes him nervous:


"It’s worse after I lose time.”

“Lose time?”

“That’s really why I’m here.”
“I definitely have anxiety. Always have. But lately I’ve been losing time. You know, like I start off one place and end up in another without knowing how I got there.” He looked down to the rug and closed his eyes. “I know. It sounds like I’m a fucking lunatic. But I don’t know what to do and you’re my last hope” (1, p. 18).


“He could barely see his reflection, but what he did see made him panic…

“It was almost like the kid staring back at him was someone else. What the hell was going on? He shook his head, trying to rid himself of the chaos barreling around in his skull like a rollercoaster that had gone off the tracks” (1, p. 45).


Comment: This is a six book series by Rob Kaufman, a writer with a degree in psychology. I am positively impressed by his evaluation and diagnosis of Dissociative Identity Disorder (Multiple Personality) at the beginning of the first volume, from which the above is quoted. I recommend it’s realism regarding the memory gap and mirror symptoms of multiple personality.


1. Rob Kaufman. Altered. (Book 1 of 6), 2022. 

Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Thank you for taking the time to comment (whether you agree or disagree) and ask questions (simple or expert). I appreciate your contribution.

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)