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, August 1, 2025

“Medea’s Curse” by Anne Buist: Murder Mystery Starts with Dissociative Identity Disorder (Multiple Personality) and then gets complicated

"This case, it is Dissociative Identity Disorder.”

“On what evidence?”

“We are not lawyers, Dr.King. Not evidence—history and mental state examination.”
“All right then, on what history and mental state findings?”

“Her postings on Facebook. This is most certainly dissociation. The vagueness and memory lapses are classical…”

“I’m not saying Georgia doesn’t dissociate, but she’s putting on an act” (1, p. 22).


Kirkus Review: “Overplotted and overdramatic; Buist’s heroine never seems to have a normal half-hour. But readers who aren’t put off by the unsparing accounts of women placed in extremis by themselves or wicked men will cheer the arrival of an authentic dragon slayer” (2).


1. Anne Buist. Medea’s Curse. London, Legend Press, 2016. 

2. Wikipedia. “Anne Buist.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Buist

3. Kirkus Review. https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/anne-buist/medeas-curse/ 

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