This Site Looks Like It Might Be Hard, But It’s Easy
The Introduction, before the most recent post, is a lot of small print, but it is easy to understand and is worth re-reading.
You do not need any prior psychiatric knowledge, and it all turns out to be simple, but is not oversimplified.
Some visitors here who have considered submitting comments have not done so, because they felt intimidated, but this site is friendly and comments are respected.
Multiple Personality: A Common Variety of Human Nature
Since most fiction writers and, probably, a substantial minority of the public, have a benign, sometimes useful form of multiple personality (what I call “multiple personality trait” as opposed to multiple personality disorder), it is common sense to view multiple personality as a common variety of human nature.
I am talking here of multiple personality in the strict sense — with memory gaps and voices, etc. — not just different moods or facets.
The New York Times Still Does Not Know Toni Morrison’s Name was NOT “Toni Morrison” and Multiple Personality is Pervasive in Her Works (1)
Please search “Toni Morrison” to see numerous relevant past posts.
1. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/28/books/review/toni-morrison-recitatif.html
Meaningless Quirk of Memory?
People with a generally excellent memory may have occasional memory gaps for periods of time or things that they would have expected to remember. It sometimes happens even when they had not been drinking or at least not drinking that much. Since it usually causes no problem, it is a meaningless quirk of memory. Do you agree?
Search "memory gaps" for relevant past posts.
This Book Review Highlights The New York Times Blind Spot for Multiple Personality issues by never mentioning multiple personality
“An unnamed narrator for unknown reasons finds himself preparing to steal the identity of a man… Alas, before he can, a stranger appears at the door, dragging the narrator off to a psychiatric hospital and the reader into a narrative whose central subject seems to be the instability of the self and the mutable nature of human consciousness. Traumatic (childhood) experiences manifest later in unpredictable ways…” (1).
Also search “namelessness,” “nameless narrator,” and “childhood trauma” for relevant past posts.
1. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/29/books/review/fuminori-nakamura-my-annihilation.html
THIS BLOG IS BRILLIANT
Not because I’m more intelligent than you are; I may not be. Not because I’m the only one to realize that many people with multiple personality are not mentally ill; other people know it. Not because I realize that most novelists have it; some have virtually admitted it. Not because I recognize unintentional symptoms of multiple personality in novels; other people could do that if they wanted to.
The brilliance of this blog is its recognition of the importance of its thesis to understanding human nature and literature.
“How Can I Know What I Think Till I See What I Say?” (1)
This is possible if the person has a thinking (and talking or writing) alternate personality with whom the regular personality is not co-conscious.
See also (2). This is possible if the regular personality hears an alternate personality as a voice in its head.
1. Quote Investigator: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2019/12/11/know-say/
2. The Guardian: “Majority of authors ‘hear’ their characters speak, finds study.”
In Multiple Personification, a proposed new name for multiple personality or dissociative identity, personification is used as in definitions 4-6 (1):
personification 1. the attribution of a personal nature or character to inanimate objects or abstract notions, esp. as a rhetorical figure. 2. the representation of a thing or abstraction in the form of a person, as in art. 3. the person or thing embodying a quality or the like; an embodiment or incarnation: He is the personification of tact. 4. an imaginary person or creature conceived or figured to represent a thing or abstraction. 5. the act of personifying. 6. a character portrayal or representation in a dramatic or literary work.
Writers create characters with their normal version of multiple personality, multiple personality trait, as previously discussed.
1. Random House. Random House Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, Second Edition. New York, Random House, 1986-2001.
Debunker Fallacies: A Brief Review
Most debunkers of multiple personality have had little or no direct experience with people who have multiple personality. They pander to other people who have never seen actual multiple personality. The reason it has not been removed from the psychiatric diagnostic manual is that debunkers cannot cite legitimate research to support their position.
Debunkers think that multiple personality is imposed on patients by therapists who believe in it. And it is certainly true that a belief in almost anything can be imposed on some people. But that also means that a therapist’s belief that people have only one personality can be imposed on patients. Debunkers somehow fail to address that possibility. And since most persons with multiple personality have a single host personality, they usually do look like they have one personality.
Multiple personality is harder to impose upon patients than other diagnoses, because it is the craziest diagnosis that most patients can imagine. It means that they often don’t know who they are or what they do! Who would want to be like that?
It is true that persons with multiple personality may have false memories, as may most people. And you should never believe memories without corroboration. Indeed, memories in multiple personality may sometimes be imaginative fantasies, which is why multiple personality may be a core asset of fiction writers.
