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.

Wednesday, June 17, 2026

Overcoming Difficulties in DIAGNOSIS

Of Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)

by Richard P. Kluft, MD (1)


“The average patient with DID has been in the mental healthcare delivery system an average of 6.8 years and has received more than three other diagnoses, reflecting either misdiagnosis or comorbidities, before receiving an accurate diagnosis of DID (1).


“Most patients with DID, whose manifestations were generally subtle or easily concealed most of the time, exhibit “windows of diagnosability,” during which the manifestations became more overt…


“These observations are consistent with the findings of Putnam..now replicated many times, that the average patient with DID has been in the mental healthcare delivery system an average of 6.8 years and has received more than three other diagnoses, reflecting either misdiagnoses or comorbidities, before receiving an accurate diagnosis of DID…


“The typical differential diagnosis for DID includes other dissociative disorders, psychoses, affective disorders, borderline personality disorder, partial complex seizures, factitious disorders, and malingering…”


Comment: The difficulties in making this now established diagnosis are widely recognized. So please click the article below, read it, and begin to develop your own expertise.


1. Richard P. Kluft, MD. Psychiatric Annals 35:8. AUGUST 2005. Diagnosing Dissociative Identity Disorder (2005). 

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)