Great Novelists Have Multiple Personality

Great Novelists have Multiple
Personality
Kenneth A. Nakdimen, MD, psychiatrist, on the creative process of normal writers.
Search "name index," "subject index," "theory."
Sat urday, February 7, 20 15
Salman Rushdies Midnights

Children (post #2): The narrator says
he hears voices and reads minds,
which his family and girlfriend think
is crazy
His Family
I heard, at first, a headful of gabbling tongues, like an untuned radioat
nearlynine [years old]inside me, the voices rebounded against the walls of
my skullI had discovered that the voices could be controlledI was a radio
receiver, and could turn the volume down or up; I could select individual
voices; I could even, by an effort of will, switch off my newly-discovered inner
ear
[With his family assembled] I told them. I heard voices yesterday. Voices are
speaking to me inside my head. I thinkthat Archangels have started to talk to
me
But his mother called him crazy, his father hit him a mighty blow on the side
of my head, and his father declared, Wife, let nobody give him food today.
You hear me? Let him enjoy his joke on an empty stomach!
So Saleem decided to keep his voices to himself and pretend it had been a
stupid joke, like you said (1, pp. 185-188).
I was wrong about the Archangels, of coursethe voices in my head far

outnumbered the ranks of the angelsTelepathy, thenIn the beginning,
before I broke through to more-than-telepathy, I contented myself with
listeningAll of which I somehow kept to myself. Reminded daily (by the
buzzing in my left, or sinister, ear) of my fathers wrathI sealed my lips. For a
nine-year-old boy, the difficulties of concealing knowledge are almost
insurmountableI had learned that secrets were not always a bad thing (1,
pp. 191-194).
His Girlfriend
I am coming to the fantastic heart of my own storyduring the first hour of
August 15th, 1947between midnight and one a.m.no less than one
thousand and one children were born within the [newly] sovereign state of
Indiaendowed with features, talents or faculties which can only be described
as miraculousBy 1957, the surviving five hundred and eighty-one children
were all nearing their tenth birthdays, wholly ignorantof one anothers
existenceAnd then, as a result of a jolt received in a bicycle-accident, I,
Saleem Sinai, became aware of them all
So among the midnight children were infants with powers of
transmutation, flight, prophecy and wizardrybut two of us were born on the
stroke of midnight. Saleem and Shiva, Shiva and Saleemto Shiva, the hour
had given the gifts of warand to me, the greatest gift of allthe ability to look
into the hears and minds of men
Padma [his girlfriend, and the audience for most of his narration] is looking
as if her mother had died O baba! she says at last. O baba! You are sick
No, that would be too easy. I refuse to take refuge in illness. Dont make the
mistake of dismissing what Ive unveiled as mere delirium; or even as the
insanely exaggerated fantasies of a lonely, ugly child. I have stated before that
I am not speaking metaphorically; what I have just written (and read aloud to
stunned Padma) is nothing less than the literal, by-the-hairs-of-my-mothershead truth
On my tenth birthday, abandoned by one set of children, I learned that five
hundred and eighty-one others were celebrating their birthdays, tooa gang
which was spread over the length and breadth of the country, and whose
headquarters were behind my eyebrowsThat is how it was when I was ten:
nothing but trouble outside my head, nothing but miracles inside it (1, pp.
224-237).
Blog Comment
I am still reading the novel. So, at this point, I can only say two things: First,I
am surprised to find that the narrators sanity is the novels central question.
And that it is a seriously posed question, since the text says that the people
who know him bestfrom his own family and culture, his parents and
girlfriendthink his claim of hearing voices and reading minds is
crazy.Second, if Saleem does not have a psychosis like schizophrenia, but,
rather, has the nonpsychotic condition, multiple personality, then the above
scenario is a very good illustration of why multiple personality is so hard to
diagnose: When the symptoms first arise in childhood, the child soon finds
that disclosing the symptoms causes problems, so the child becomes good at
keeping the symptoms secret.
1.SalmanRushdie.Midnight'sChildren.NewYork,RandomHouse,1981/2006.
Posted by Kenneth A. Nakdimen at 5:33 PM No comments:
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Salman Rushdies Midnights

Children: Multiple Personality is Why
the Narrator, in Regard to Gandhis
Death, is Unnecessarily Unreliable
In his introduction to the 25th anniversary edition of his best of the Booker
novel, Midnights Children, Salman Rushdie explains the principles of its
magic realism: I have writtenelsewhere about my debt toDickens for his
ability to root his larger-than-life characters and surrealist imagery in a
sharply observed, almost hyperrealistic background, out of which the comic
and fantastic elements of his work seem to grow organically (1, p. xi).
To repeat: almost hyperrealistic background
The mentality that wrote the introduction believes that the magical elements
of the story should have a very realistic background.
So it is startlingly inconsistent when Saleem Sinai, the first-person narrator,
says, The assassination of Mahatma Gandhi occurs, in these pages, on the
wrong date. Butin my India, Gandhi will continue to die at the wrong time.
Does one error invalidate the entire fabric? Am I so far gone, in my desperate
need for meaning, that Im prepared to distort everythingto re-write the
whole history of my timesToday, in my confusion, I cant judge (1, pp.
189-190).
Thus, the mentality behind the introduction is not the same mentality that is
behind the first-person narration. Had the former been in charge of writing
this novel, the date of Gandhis death would have been, at the very least,
corrected in a re-write, because the background should be very realistic, and
there is no literary necessity, in plotting or characterization, to get the date of
Gandhis death wrong.
I have written in past posts that the unreliable narrator is suggestive of
multiple personality. My argument is even stronger when the narrator
isunnecessarily unreliable, and is in clear violation of the authors own
principles.
1.SalmanRushdie.MidnightsChildren[1981].NewYork,RandomHouseTrade
Paperbacks,2006.
Posted by Kenneth A. Nakdimen at 10:24 AM No comments:
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F riday, February 6 , 2 015
Magical Realism and Telepathy:

Persons with Multiple Personality
May Believe in Telepathy due to
Anonymous Thought-Transference
In yesterdays post on magical realism in literature, I mentioned that persons
with multiple personality, like novelists, may be familiar with telepathic
(mind-reading) kinds of experience, because one of their identities may be coconscious with another of their identities, and so can read the other
identitys mind.
But what if the co-consciousness between two identities is one-way (which
often happens)? Suppose identity A can read the mind of identity B,
but Bdoesnt even know that A exists (and A wants to keep it that way). In
that case, A could communicate with B anonymously, in either of two ways.

First, A could speak to B audibly, in which case B would hear voices.
Second, A could transfer thoughts or information directly into Bsmind,
which B may interpret as having magically learned something by telepathy.
Thus, when characters in a magical realism novel experience telepathy, it may
reflect the authors experience with multiple personality.
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T hursday, February 5, 201 5
Magical Realism and Multiple

Personality: A Characters Telepathy
is based on Co-Consciousness of the
Authors Alternate Personalities
In my post of May 20, 2014 (search magical realism), I quoted Gabriel
Garcia Marquez as rejecting the label of magical realism. He explained that
what people call magical realism is just the way he thinks.
Why would he think that way? Because great novelists have multiple
personality. And one way of describing multiple personality is to say that it is
magical thinking by a person who is grounded in reality.
For example, suppose that a character in a magical realism novel is
telepathic; that is, he can read another characters mind. Well, that is routine
in multiple personalitywhen one identity reads another identitys mind
only instead of telepathy, it is called co-consciousness.
Why, then, dont all great novelists write magical realism novels? Literary
fashion and self-control.
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Wednes day, February 4, 201 5
American Psychiatric Associations

DSM-5 says Imaginary Playmates are
the Normal Multiple Personality of
Childhood
DSM-5, the official psychiatric diagnostic manual, prohibits the
clinician from making the diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder (multiple
personality disorder) in children on the basis of imaginary playmates (1, p.
292).
The manual doesnt give a reason, but the implication is that imaginary
playmates are common and normal.
The manual does not disqualify imaginary playmates by specifying
any observable differences between it and multiple personality.
Indeed, if imaginary playmates and multiple personality did not
look quite similar, there would be no reason for the manual to
mention it.
Of course, DSM-5 is a manual of mental disorders, not normal psychology. A
person could very clearly have multiple personalities, but unless the
symptoms cause clinically significant distress and impairment in social,
occupational, or other important areas of functioning (1, p. 292), DSM-5 is
not interested.
Skeptics about multiple personality think that they are being clever
when they they ask, If multiple personality is real and begins in
childhood, why is it found so infrequently in childhood? The
answer is that multiple personality is so common in childhood that
it is considered normal.
1.AmericanPsychiatricAssociation:DiagnosticandStatisticalManualofMental
Disorders,FifthEdition.Arlington,VA,AmericanPsychiatricAssociation,2013.
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Tue sday, February 3 , 2015
What would happen if novelists

publicly announced that they had
multiple personality? Some have, but
few take them seriously.
As previously discussed in this blog, a few writers havemore or less, directly
or indirectlygone public. But when J. M. Barrie spoke publicly about his
alternate personality, it was treated as a joke. When Sue Grafton said that she
had alternate personalities, the public mostly ignored it. When Margaret
Atwood wrote that all fiction writers have a split personality, and when she,
Philip Roth, Dean Koontz, and others published novels that featured multiple
personality, few made much of it.
The public probably doesnt believe that novelists have multiple personality,
because they think it would interfere with a persons ability to function. And
since J. M. Barrie, Sue Grafton, Margaret Atwood, Philip Roth, and Dean
Koontz have obviously functioned very wellindeed, at a very high levelhow
could they have had multiple personality? The answer is that most people with
multiple personality are normal. And some are gifted.
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Monday, February 2, 201 5
Galya Diments Autobiographical

Novel of Co-Consciousness: Multiple
Personality in James
Joyces Ulysses and Virginia
Woolfs To the Lighthouse
I have borrowed Morton Princes term co-consciousness to defineWoolfs
and Joyces approaches to inner duality where the writers fictionalize what
appear to be equally conscious sides of their complex personalities. I strongly
believe that it is this co-consciousness that provides the most telling
distinction between two different approaches to the theme of inner duality
the divided-they-stand approach of the writers discussed in this study, and

the divided-they-fall approach of the celebrated masters of the double (1, p.
4).
Being a psychopathologist, Prince was naturally concerned with the clinical
cases of dissociationYet by the turn of the century Princes contemporaries
were postulating that a tendency toward splitting ones personality is a
common trait in many healthy psychesby 1924 Prince himself came to
believe that one did not have to be clinically ill to have as many selves as we
have moods, or contrasting traits, or sides to our personalities, and that socalled abnormal cases merely took those rather benign Ichspaltungtendencies
to pathological extremes (1, pp. 49-50).
Virginia Woolf
the largely autobiographical nature of Woolfs To the Lighthouse,published
in 1927, is well establishedCam Ramsay and Lily Briscoe can be seen as
complementary autobiographical charactersWoolfs useof two characters
to represent one personality accurately reflects not only her sense of inner
duality but also her belief in the possibility of multiple states of consciousness.
Thus in April of 1925, at the time she was conceptualizing To the
Lighthouse, Woolf noted in her diary: My present reflection is that people
have any number of states of consciousnesssecond selves is what I meanIn
her use of a split autobiographical selfWoolf may have been guided by the
example of Joyces Ulysses(1, pp. 63-106).
James Joyce
Frank Budgen quotes Joyce as saying to him once: Why all this fuss and
bother about the mystery of the unconscious? What about the mystery of the
conscious? What do they know about that? That simple remark captures, it
seems to me, what may have been in Joyces mind when he decided to split his
fictional alter ego into two in Ulysses. Joyce was interested in the mystery of
the conscious, andchose to fictionalize in his novel two equally co-conscious
parts of his nature
The parallel quests of Stephen Dedalus as a son in search of a surrogate
father, and Leopold Bloom as a father in search of a surrogate son, are among
the most discussed themes in this centurys literary criticism(1, pp. 111-117).
Co-Consciousness is Multiple Personality
I think, therefore I am, because a person is a thinking being; that is, a being
with consciousness. Thus, more than one consciousness means more than one
being. Co-consciousness means at least two beings who are aware of what each
other thinks. If there is only one body, it is called multiple personality.
Novelists Use Normal Multiple Personality to Write Novels
Prof. Galya Diment is saying that Woolf and Joyce had normal multiple
personality, and that they each used two of their alternate identities as
complementary characters in these novels.
She calls it The Autobiographical Novel of Co-Consciousness. I call it Multiple
Identity Literary Theory.
1.GalyaDiment.TheAutobiographicalNovelofCoConsciousness:Goncharov,
Woolf,andJoyce.UniversityPressofFlorida,1994.
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Mikhail Bakhtin is the closest that

standard literary theory comes to
addressing multiple consciousness
and multiple personality
In a couple of previous posts, I cited Mikhail Bakhtin on Dostoevsky. You can
tell that Bakhtin discusses issues relevant to multiple personality by just
looking at the index of his book, Problems of Dostoevskys Poetics, where you
find: Double (split personality) and his literary concept about how
Dostoevsky was able to write about that, multi-voicedness or polyphony.
Bakhtin is proposing the theorywithout knowing that he is proposing the
theorythat split personality is found in literature, because novelists have
multiple personality (which is Multiple Identity Literary Theory, the theory of
this blog). Bakhtin talks about split personality (an informal term for multiple
personality) without actually relating it to multiple personality, per se.
So, I am hereby amending my last post on twenty textbooks of literary theory.

They may not discuss the theme of the double directly, but the issue is raised
indirectly if they mention Mikhail Bakhtin, which they often do.
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Sunday, February 1, 201 5
Twenty Textbooks on Literary Theory

Fail to Discuss The Theme of the
Double as the Literary Metaphor for
Multiple Personality
In an online survey of twenty textbooks on literary theory, I searched their
texts for any mention of theme of the double.
Only one book out of twenty even mentioned the theme of the double. And
that book did not connect the theme with multiple personality.
In its section on psychoanalytic literary theory, it discussed Freuds essay,
The Uncanny, which certainly does mention the theme of the double. But, in
Freudian theory and Freuds essay, the obvious connection between thetheme
of the double and multiple personality is completely overlooked. As I have
repeatedly pointed out in this blog, Freuds model of the mind, which posits a
single consciousness, cannot account for the existence of even one case of
multiple personality, which involves multiple consciousness. And Freud,
himself, acknowledged the existence of such cases.
Thus, nineteen out of twenty textbooks on literary theory made no
mention whatsoever of the theme of the double. The twentieth
textbook did mention it, but not its connection to multiple
personality.
Evidently, none of the standard literary theories understands the theme of the
double, Dostoevskys The Double, and other works with these issues.
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Sat urday, January 31 , 2 015
Definition of Memory Gap: When a

person cannot understand why they
do not remember a period of time,
certain behavior, or an event
People have a lot of experience with normal forgetting. After all, time passes.
Many things are routine, trivial, or uninteresting. Also, a person sees what
others forget. So most people know very well what is normal forgetting.
(Of course, I'm not talking here about a general problem with memory, such as
is seen in Alzheimer's. People with the kind of memory gaps discussed in this
post have generally good memory, often exceptionally good memory, which
makes these memory gaps so puzzling.)
When I ask someone if they have memory gaps, I rarely have to explain what I
mean. A person who has had memory gaps will usually give me an example.
For example, one woman told me that her boyfriend had recently asked her if
she was enjoying the coat he had given her. She told him yes, so as not to hurt
his feelings or appear stupid, but she really didnt know what he was talking
about. However, when she got home, she found the new coat in her closet. But
she still did not remember getting it. (And we determined that she had not
been intoxicated, and that the coat had not been put in the closet without her
knowing it as a surprise or practical joke. Also, let me add, Feb. 1st, she said
that she had been having memory gaps since childhood, so this was no big
deal.)
Talking about the coat made her uncomfortable. I could see that she wanted to
change the subject. But I kept discussing it. And after about five minutes, her
demeanor suddenly changed, and I was talking to another identity, who
explained how she had gone shopping with the boyfriend and made him aware
of how much she loved that coat, and how she was happy when he gave it to
her. I then stopped discussing the coat, and her demeanor suddenly changed
back to her regular self, who had no memorya memory gapfor what had
just happened.
Neither the regular identity nor the alternate identity accepted the idea that
she had multiple personality. The regular identity did not call me a liar when I
told her about my conversation with other identity, but she did not remember
it, and thought the idea of multiple personality was far-fetched. When, at a
later time, I talked again with the alternate identity, she remembered both my
conversation with her and my conversation with the regular host identity.
But the alternate identity rejected the idea of multiple personality, because she
felt that she was a person in her own right.
Do novelists occasionally have memory gaps during times when they write, or
in the rest of their life?
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F riday, January 30 , 201 5
Failure to diagnose dissociative

identity disorder is inevitable with
the interview taught in American
psychiatry residency training
programs
Psychiatric diagnosis depends on an interview called the Mental Status
Examination (MSE). Psychiatrists are not able to diagnose a disorder if the
MSE fails to elicit its symptoms, its Diagnostic Criteria.
The Diagnostic Criteria for dissociative identity disorder (multiple
personality disorder), found in DSM-5 (the diagnostic manual), may be
abbreviated as follows:
Criterion A: alternate identities
Criterion B: memory gaps
Interviewing the Host Identity
Since the psychiatrist will be interviewing the patients regular or host
identitywho is unaware of any other identitiesneither the psychiatrist nor
the patient (the host identity) will suspect dissociative identity disorder.
Alternate Identities Hide and Remain Incognito
Alternate identities will usually hide during psychiatric interviews. But even if
an alternate identity does come out during the interview, it will not give its
name or identify itself. It will answer to the patients regular name in order to
fool the psychiatrist.
Why? Because they didnt make this appointment. They are not the patient.
And they see the psychiatrist as being an ally of the host identity in the doctorpatient relationship. Moreover, they fear that if the psychiatrist knew about
them, he would try to get rid of them, out of loyalty to the host identity, his
patient.
Memory Gaps as Footprints
Therefore, since the psychiatrist will not seeor at least not knowingly see
alternate identities, the key to making this diagnosis is to screen for it by
getting a history of memory gaps. The host identity is usually aware of having
had memory gaps, and will give that history if asked, but only if asked, because
the gaps are nothing new, and the host has always tried to ignore them.
If there is a history of memory gapsand if they have no medical or
neurological causethen the gaps may be periods of time during which
alternate identities have been out. So getting a history of memory gaps is like
finding the footprints of alters, but not the alters themselves.
The MSE and Memory Gaps
Does the traditional MSE interview ask patients if they have a history of
memory gaps? Unfortunately, it does not. It evaluates short-term memory and
long-term memory. It does not ask about memory gaps.
If alcoholism is at issue, the traditional MSE may inquire about alcoholic
blackouts. But it fails to inquire about nonalcoholic dry blackouts.
The Formal Diagnosis
The diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder is not made unless and until the
clinician knowingly meets, and has conversations with, the alternate identities
(Criterion A), and then finds that the host identity has amnesia (memory gaps)
(Criterion B) for those conversations.
However, as explained above, the diagnostic process usually starts with
Criterion B (memory gaps), and eventually leads to Criterion A (alternate
identities).
But I never see that.
When told that a colleague has made the diagnosis of dissociative identity
disorder, most American psychiatrists wonder why, if its real, they never see
it. The reason is that the traditional MSE fails to ask patients if they have a
history of memory gaps.
Except for the rare cases in which alternate identities are overt in the initial
interview, it is only after getting a history of memory gaps, and then finding
out what caused the memory gaps, that a psychiatrist will make this diagnosis.
Most American psychiatrists think that they never see such cases, because
they do not routinely ask their patients if they have a history of memory gaps.
Books That Illustrate the Problem

Note: These books were chosen, because they are excellent in other regards.
1. Mark Zimmerman, M.D. Interview Guide for Evaluating DSM-5
Psychiatric Disorders and the Mental Status Examination. East Greenwich,
RI, Psych Products Press, 2013.
Patients are never asked if they have a history of memory gaps, and
the book never even mentions dissociative identity disorder.
2. Paula T. Trzepacz, M.D., Robert W. Baker, M.D. The Psychiatric Mental
Status Examination. New York, Oxford University Press, 1993.
the book never even mentions multiple personality disorder(the
name of the disorder at the time this book was published).
3. David J. Robinson, M.D. Brain Calipers 2nd Ed.: Descriptive
Psychopathology and the Psychiatric Mental Status Examination. Rapid
Psychler Press, 2001.
the book never even mentions dissociative identity disorder.
4. Abraham M. Nussbaum, M.D. The Pocket Guide to the DSM-5 Diagnostic
Exam. Washington, D.C., American Psychiatric Publishing (A Division of
American Psychiatric Association), 2013.
At first, this guide looks enlightened. Its general psychiatric interview
includes the following screening question under the heading of Dissociation:
Everyone has trouble remembering things sometimes, but do you ever lose
time, forget important details about yourself, or find evidence that you took
part in events you cannot recall? And in its brief chapter on Dissociative
Disorders, this guide includes dissociative identity disorder.
However, in contradiction to the above, its outline of the Mental Status
Examination includes recent and remote memory, but omits memory gaps.
And in its chapter, A Brief Version of DSM-5covering, the author implies,
the really important disordersit omits dissociative identity disorder (even
though the author, having read DSM-5, should have known that dissociative
identity disorder has a greater prevalence than schizophrenia).
Therefore, the mixed-message of this guide is that the conscientious
psychiatrist should screen for multiple personality by asking a question about
memory gaps, but if the psychiatrist doesn't have time to do everything, and
must focus only on what, in the authors opinion, is really important, then
screening for dissociative identity disorder can be omitted.
In short, even when American psychiatrists are taught how to screen for
dissociative identity disorder, they are told not to bother.
In conclusion, to make the MSE capable of screening for dissociative
identity disorder, its evaluation of memory must include memory gaps. This
would require the addition of one word to the outline of the MSE taught to
psychiatrists:
Traditional MSE
Memory: short-term, long-term
Revised MSE
Memory: short-term, long-term, gaps
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Wednes day, January 28, 20 15
Salman Rushdies Interviews: On

Autonomous Characters, Theme of
the Double, Multiple Personality, and
Divided Self in Midnight's

Children and Satanic Verses
Padma is one of my favorite characters in [Midnights Children], because she
was completely unplanned. In the first version, she appeared as a very minor
character in the last fifteen or so pages; then, when the narrator began to tell
the book, she arrived and sat there, she simply demanded to be told the story
and kept interrupting it, telling Saleem to get on with it. She became very
important because she literally demanded to be important (1, p. 14).
What I meant was that Saleem's whole persona is a childlike one, because
children believe themselves to be the centre of the universe, and they stop as
they grow up; but he never stops, he believesat the point where he begins the
novelthat he is the prime mover of these great events. It seemed to me that it
was quite possible to read the entire book as his distortion of history, written
to prove that he was at the middle of it. But the moment at which reality starts
to face him it destroys him; he cant cope with it, and he retreats into a kind of
catatonic state or he becomes acquiescent and complacent (1, p. 41).
I do find it difficult to start writing until I can hear the people speak (1, p.
98).
Many of the characters in [The Satanic Verses] are for a long time not really
unitary selves, theyre just collections of selvesAnd I think thats also true
about people, that we are not unitary selves, we are a kind of bag of selves,
which we draw out from; we become this or that self in different
circumstances (1, p. 103).
I think, like most writers, that I am most completely myself when I write, and
not the rest of the time. I have a social self, and my full self cant be released
except in writing (1, p. 46).
Then I suppose what I finally understood, which actually let me start writing,
was that [The Satanic Verses] is about, unsurprisingly I suppose for me, about
divided selvesAnd I discovered, only now, really, only in the last few weeks
when Ive been obliged to start talking about the book, that I keep doing this, it
seems. That it seems to me Ive done it, if you look at every novelDoubles,
yesobviously Saleem in Midnights ChildrenAnd here I am doing it again. I
feel ashamed of thisMaybe becoming conscious of it is a way of stopping (1,
p. 90-91).
1.MichaelReder(Editor).ConversationswithSalmanRushdie.Jackson,University
PressofMississippi,2000.
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Elena Ferrante (post #2): The FirstPerson Narrator of Her First Novel
Has Multiple Personality
At the beginning of the novel, Delias mother, Amalia, has recently committed
suicide by drowning. The end of the novel is as follows:
I dug in my purse and took out my identification cardWith a penI drew
around my own features my mothers hairI was Amalia (1, p. 139).
Delias switch to an Amalia alternate personality is not an acute grief reaction.
The whole novel is about how this has been going on since Delia was a child.
But I still had the impression of not being alone. I was being spied upon, not
by that Amalia of months before who now was dead but by me coming out on
the landing to see myself sitting there (1, p. 24).
Delia is prone to dissociative trance states (not unusual in people with
multiple personality): I fell into a torpor crowded with imagesin my waking
sleepI had dreamed it that way countless times with my eyes open, as I did
now yet again (1, pp. 30-31).
By then I knew that in that image of fantasy there was a secret that could not
be revealed, not because one part of me didnt know how to get to it but
because, if I did, the other part would have refused to name it and would have
driven me out 1, p. 35).
When I came to myself, I felt drained, depressed by the sensation of being
humiliated in front of the part of myself that watched over every possible
yielding to the other (1, p. 37).
I decided to put on makeup. It was an unusual reaction. I didnt wear makeup

often or willinglyBut just then I seemed to need itYoure a ghost, I said to
the woman in the mirror. She had the face of a person in her forties I dont
like you, I whispered as I put on some blusher. And in order not to be
contradicted, I tried not to look at her (1, p. 42).
As I have previously discussed in this blog in reference to Gabriel Garcia
Marquez and others, people with multiple personality sometimes have a
problem with mirrors, because they may see another identity in the mirror,
and they may not like it.
In childhood, one of Delias alternate identities had evidently told her father
stories about her mother Amalias infidelity. It is not clear what had actually
happened. It may have been that, in childhood, Delias Amalia identity had
been molested. You told your father everything. Everything. Me. I didnt like
that suggestion and didnt want to know what you he was talking about (1,
p. 50).
A typical statement by a person with multiple personality, each of whose
identities has its own, separate, memory bank: I remembered but I couldnt
tell myself (1, p. 118). That is, one of her identities had memory of something
that it wouldnt share another of her identities.
Delia says of her childhood, I was pretending not to be me. I didnt want to be
I,' unless it was the I of Amalia. I did what I imagined Amalia did in secretI
was I and I was herI felt I was her, with her thoughts (1, pp. 130-131).
In childhood, she had told her father that someone had done and said to
Amalia, with her consent, in the basement of the pastry shop, all the things
that in reality Antonios grandfather had said and perhaps done to me (1, p.
133).
In short, the novel describes a woman who has had multiple personality since
childhood.
Note:IhavenotreadEldaBuonannosLaFrantumaglia:ElenaFerrante's
"FragmentedSelf,whichisbasedonElenaFerrantesownnonfictionbook,andon
howthisthemeappearsinFerrantesnovels.Idontknowifmultiplepersonality,per
se,isdiscussed.
1.ElenaFerrante.TroublingLove[1992].TranslatedfromtheItalianbyAnn
Goldstein.NewYork,EuropaEditions,2006.
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Nobel Prize novelist Thomas

MannsConfessions of Felix Krull,
Confidence Man, a novel about
multiple identities, possibly multiple
personality
Thomas Mann (1875-1955) had worked intermittently on this story for nearly
fifty years, and it was still unfinished at the time of his death. Why so long and
inconclusive? Was it just an idea he had picked up from the story of a real-life
confidence man, or from other things he had read? Was it a metaphor for
hidden struggles with sexual orientation? Or is this another example of a
novelists saving his personal issue with multiple personality for his last novel,
like Dickenss Drood, Twains Mysterious Stranger,Hemingways Garden of
Eden, and Melvilles Confidence Man?
The first-person narrator, Felix Krull, works as a waiter at a Paris hotel, where
he sleeps in the employees' dormitory. At the same time, he maintains an
apartment elsewhere in Paris where he keeps an upper-class set of clothes,
which he wears when he dines out with the rich. This amounted, as one can
see, to a kind of dual existence, whose charm lay in the ambiguity as to which
figure was the real I and which was the masqueradeThus I masqueraded in
both capacities, and the undisguised reality behind the two appearances, the
real I, could not be identified because it actually did not exist (1, p. 230).
He had never been satisfied to be who he was, glorying as I did in the
independent and self-sufficient exercise of my imagination, holding lively
imaginary conversations, and even bringing the muscles controlling the
pupilsunder voluntary control. I would stand in front of my mirror,
concentrating all my powers in a command to my pupils to contract or
expandMy persistent efforts, let me tell you, were, in fact, crowned with
successI actually succeeded in contracting them to the merest points and
then expanding them to great, round, mirror-like pools. The joy I felt at this
success was almost terrifying and was accompanied by a shudder at the
mystery of man (1, pp. 10-12).
NOTE: The reason I quote this about controlling his pupils is that some people
with multiple personality appear to have alternate personalities who differ
from each other in visual acuity, and this might be caused by alters' differing
from each other in pupillary contraction.
My basic attitude toward the world and society can only be called
inconsistentThere was, for example, an idea that occasionally preoccupied
meIt was the idea of interchangeability (1, p. 224).
The rest of the novel is about his exchange of identities with someone.
In conclusion, I cant say with certainty that Felix Krull is about multiple
personality or that this would mean that Thomas Mann had multiple
personality. But I think that the above is sufficient to raise the possibility.
1.ThomasMann.ConfessionsofFelixKrull,ConfidenceMan.Translatedfromthe
GermanbyDenverLindley.NewYork,AlfredA.Knopf,1955.
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Myth of the Cultural Construction of

Multiple Personality: The truth is that
Sybil (1973) was
propaganda against multiple
personality, and was ignored by most
American psychiatrists.
Critics of multiple personality often cite the case of Sybilsearch Sybil
Exposed in this blogas the prime example of how a popular book and movie
(about a case of multiple personality) was responsible for a large increase in
diagnosed cases.
But Sybil portrayed multiple personality as extremely rare. Otherwise, what

would have been the big deal?
The other reason that Sybil was actually propaganda against multiple
personality is that most real patients are frightened by books and movies like
that.
When people who dont know they have multiple personality see a movie
likeSybil, they see someone afflicted with something that they would never
want to have. To them, it looks crazier and more frightening than even a
psychosis like schizophrenia.
Real psychiatric patients think: In schizophrenia, you may have hallucinations
and delusions, but at least you know who you are and what you are doing.
Whereas, in multiple personality, you literally dont know who you are (are
you this personality or that personality?) and you literally dont know what
you are doing (due to amnesia for what other personalities have done). Being
like Sybil would be the worst and craziest psychiatric condition that they could
imagine.
In the real world, for every patient who didn't have multiple personality but
wanted to be like Sybil, there were a thousand patients who did have multiple
personality, but who saw Sybil and fled from the diagnosis.
Why, then, were more cases diagnosed in the twenty years
following Sybil(1973)? It was not because of Sybil, [whose impact on
American culture was trivial]. There were [four] other trends of much greater
influence. First, in the 1970s, there was an exponential increase in verified
cases of child abuse. Second, there was the second wave of feminism. Third,
a number of astute clinicians chanced upon the diagnosis and pursued the
issue. [added January 17th:] Fourth, Freudian psychologywhose singleconsciousness model of the mind had made multiple personality seem
logically impossiblewas losing its influence. Those were the years that
American psychiatry abandoned psychoanalysis in favor of
psychopharmacology (treatment with medication).
I, myself, did not diagnose multiple personality until 1987, more than a decade
after Sybil. Multiple personality had been barely mentioned in my psychiatric
training in the 1970s, when the big thing in American psychiatry had been
lithium and bipolar disorder. Sybil (1973) had not caused me or any
psychiatrist that I knew to diagnose multiple personality. Indeed, I and most
American psychiatrists in the 1970s and 1980s thought of multiple personality

as something that they were never likely to see (if we ever thought of it at all,
which we rarely did).
As an American psychiatrist who was in American psychiatric training at the
time Sybil was published, I can tell you that it had virtually no impact on
American psychiatrists. Following the publication of Sybil, and to this day, I
would guess that less than one percent of American psychiatrists have ever
made the diagnosis. It is in the American psychiatric diagnostic manual
because of scientific studies, not because it has ever been widely diagnosed in
American psychiatry.
I have previously touched on why so few American psychiatrists make the
diagnosis. It has to do with how American psychiatrists are trained, a subject I
will come back to.
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Credibility: What is the minimum

requirement for a nonfiction book,
article, or speaker to have credibility
regarding multiple personality?
Are opinions about multiple personality credible if the person is
1. a psychiatrist?
2. a psychologist?
3. a psychoanalyst?
4. a psychotherapist?
5. a scholar?
6. well-respected?
Not necessarily! Often not!
The minimum requirement for credibility is that, for months or years, the
person has talked with people who have multiple personality, including
conversations with their alternate personalities.
Any author or speaker without that experience is not credible in regard to
multiple personality.

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Ian Hackings Rewriting the Soul:

Multiple Personality and the
Sciences of MemoryGives Opinions
About Observable Matters That the
Author Has Not Observed
A professor of literature recently suggested that if I wanted to understand her
view of multiple personality, I should read the book by Professor of
Philosophy, Ian Hacking. So I have.
In this case, you can tell a book by its cover, since the back flap reveals what
motivated the author: Hacking is against scientizing of the soul. He is
interested in multiple personality only to the extent that it is involved in
sciences intrusion into the philosophical, moral, and spiritual soul.
[Is] there...such a thing as multiple personality [?]. The straightforward
answer is plainly yesthe simple conclusion is that there is such a disorderIs
multiple personality a real disorder as opposed to a kind of behavior worked
up by doctor and patient? If we have to answer yes-or-no, the answer is yes, it
is realthat is, multiple personality is not usually iatrogenic (1, pp. 10-12).
Yet, since he also gives the views of skeptics, he says, You may be beginning
to think Im of two minds, just a little bit split myself, when it comes to
multiple personalityWhat do I think? Is it real or not? I am not going to
answer that question (1, p. 16).
His real concern is how multiple personality and the sciences of memory
(neurology, psychology, etc.) are tampering with the soul:
Talk of the soul sounds old-fashioned, but I take it seriously. The soul that
was scientized was something transcendental, perhaps immortal.
Philosophers of my stripe speak of the soul not to suggest something eternal,
but to invoke character, reflective choice, self-understanding, valuesfreedom
and responsibility. Love, passion, envy, tedium, regret, and quiet contentment
are the stuff of the soulI do not think of the soul as unitary, as an essence, as
one single thing, or even as a thing at all. It does not denote an unchanging
core of personal identity. One person, one soul, may have many facets and
speak with many tongues (1, p. 6).
The soul was the last bastion of thought free of scientific scrutiny (1, p. 208).
in the latter part of the nineteenth centuryMemorybecame a scientific
key to the soul, so that by investigating memory (to find out the facts) one
would conquer the spiritual domain of the soul and replace it by a surrogate,
knowledge about memorySubsequently, what would previously have been
debates on the moral and spiritual plane took place at the level of factual
knowledge (1, p. 198).
Regarding multiple personality, Hacking would include himself among the
less arrogant and more reflective doubtersThey accept that the patient has
produced this version of herself: a narrative that includes dramatic events, a
causal story of the formation of alters [alternate personalities], and an account
of the relationships between the alters. That is a self-consciousness; that is a
soul. [Reasonable] doubters accept it as a realityNevertheless, they fear that
multiple personality therapy leads to a false consciousness. Not in the blatant
sense that the apparent memories of early abuse are necessarily wrong or
distortedthey may be true enough. No, there is the sense that the end
product is a thoroughly crafted personThat is a deeply moral judgment (1,
pp. 266-267).
Hacking says that, in most cases, the patient, not the therapist, has produced
the multiple personality narrative. The condition really occurs. But he suspects
that cultural beliefs and therapeutic practices have a major impact on the
patients narrative.
The reason he thinks so is that he has never diagnosed, treated, or even
interviewed people who have multiple personality. As he says, The whole field
of multiple personality is ripe for participant observationBut that is a task
for others. I have scrupulously limited myself to matters of public record (1,
p. 7).
Even though Professor Hacking is honest, and acknowledges that he has never
been a participant observer of multiple personality, I dont think that that fact
registers with most readers. For who could believe that a nonfiction book
about an observable matter would be written by someone who had never
observed it?
1.IanHacking.RewritingtheSoul:MultiplePersonalityandtheSciencesof
Memory.PrincetonUniversityPress,1995.
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Monday, January 12, 20 15
Either What I Say Cant Be True

about Novelists, Creative Writing,
Psychiatry, and Multiple Personality
Or It Has Been Known Since Plato
and Euripides
The foremost experts in multiple personalitythose psychiatrists and
psychologists who have specialized in the study and treatment of multiple
personality, and have published books about itdo not recognize what I call
normal multiple personality in novelists or anyone else. And if what I say is
true, how could they have missed it?
Many of the novelists and novels discussed in this blog have been studied by
groups and networks of eminent scholars. Indeed, much of this blog consists
of quotations from their essays and books. So how can I come along and say
that multiple personality is involved, if they dont agree and are not
convinced?
But suppose my ideas were to catch on and become popular. I would get credit
for only a few minutes. Then everyone would remember all the psychologists,
psychiatrists, philosophers, and fiction writers who have been saying the same
thingsor at least things consistent with what I've been sayingsince
antiquity (search Plato and Euripides, for my post of June 28, 2014).
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Skepticism by Some Psychiatrists

about the Prevalence of Multiple
Personality is Based on Their Not

Asking Relevant Questions in
Interviews
You, dear reader, may have an agnostic opinion about multiple personality,
because you have seen books by psychiatrists and others on both sides. And
you have never been told the cause of the skepticism. The cause is
that the relevant kind of interview question discussed below is not taught in
most psychiatric training programs. And some psychiatrists, including some
eminent ones, have never learned it and never used it to screen their patients
for multiple personality.
The minimum essential question that a psychiatrist or psychologist must ask
in order to know whether or not the people they interview have multiple
personality is: Have you ever had memory gaps?
Other versions of the same question: When you not intoxicated, do you ever
lose time? Do things ever happen that nobody else could have done, but you
dont remember doing it? Do people ever refer to things that they assume you
rememberthings that you or they allegedly said or didbut you dont
remember it. Have you ever found anything among your belongings that you
couldnt account for? Have you ever found yourself somewhere, but didnt
know how you got there? Are there things or events that you know about, and
should remember, but you really dont?
A person who does not have multiple personality will not understand such
questions. A person who has had such experiences deserves further
evaluation. A formal diagnosis of multiple personality is not made unless and
until the psychiatrist actually speaks to an alternate personality, which is
beyond the scope of this post.
Suffice it to say that 99% of the time the interviewer will not need hypnosis
or drugs; there will be no contextlegal or otherwisein which malingering
would make sense; and the interviewee will prefer to have almost any other
diagnosis.
Either a psychiatrist screens all his patients for multiple personality by asking
one simple type of questionHave you ever had memory gaps?or a
psychiatrists skepticism about multiple personality is based on dont ask,

dont tell.
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Sunday, January 11, 20 15
Is Multiple Personality a fad and a

debatable interpretation, or has it
been documented for over 400 years,
and is it clearly observable?
Cases of the clinical disorder, multiple personality disorder, have been
documented for over 400 years (see post earlier today).
And that is just the clinical disorder. One would expect the normal version of
multiple personalitythe subject of this blog to be much more common than
the clinical disorder (just as one would expect more people to have normal
anxiety than to have an anxiety disorder).
And since imaginary companions are known to be relatively common in
childhood, it is reasonable to expect that something so similar, multiple
personality, would be just as natural to human psychology, and also relatively
common.
But isnt that kind of thing just for children, in childhood? Dont adults
outgrow that? Many dont. It is just that they are more discreet about
mentioning it, and may think about it in other terms. Who would be so
indiscreet as to say so? Novelist Stephen King, for one. I have quoted Stephen
King in this blog as saying that novelists dont outgrow it.
But the main point I would emphasize is that the diagnosis of multiple
personality involves the observation of certain unmistakable
behavior (the diagnostic criteria in the diagnostic manual). That is why the
vociferous critics of multiple personality have not been able to get it kicked out
of the diagnostic manual. Too many people have seen it.
Multiple personality is neither a fad nor an interpretation. Just the opposite. It
has been documented for over 400 years and it is observable.

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Multiple Personality Stands the Test

of Time: A More Complete History of
Multiple Personality (aka
Dissociative Identity) Goes Back to
1584
http://www.dissociative-identity-disorder.net/wiki/History_of_DID
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Sat urday, January 10 , 2 015
Which is Longest Standing, Most

Established, Psychiatric Diagnosis?
Multiple Personality since 1791;
Obsessive-Compulsive since 1860s;
Schizophrenia since 1890s; or Panic
Disorder since 1980?
As indicated above, multiple personality has been a distinct psychiatric
diagnosis for 70 years longer than OCD, 100 years longer than schizophrenia,
and 189 years longer than panic disorder.
http://www.fortea.us/english/psiquiatria/history.htm
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2667880
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3181977/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19698673
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Some literary fictionby Marcel

Proust, Henry James, etc.is hard to
read, because of the authors multiple
personality and failure to heed Toni
Morrison.
Many people are bored with literature like that of Proust and James:
http://www.nytimes.com/1997/03/16/magazine/literature-bores-me.html
But these critics dont have a good theory as to why such authors write that
way and why other people think those authors are extraordinarily good.
My recent posts on Proust may explain what is going on. His writing involves
the perspectives of multiple selves, who often come and go without each
identitys being identified. Thats difficult to follow.
Another difficulty is that the authors alternate personalities are so
autonomous that they ramble on in pursuit of their own interests. As quoted
in a past post, Toni Morrison, who had been an editor, said that she could tell
when a character had gotten away from a writer. She cautioned writers to
control their characters and let them know whose novel it is. But since some of
her own novels are as hard to read as James or Proust, it may be that she has
not always taken her own advice.
Why do some readers love that kind of writing? It can be rewarding to find
that something, which seems crazy at first, makes more and more sense the
more you look into it.
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Great Commercial, Genre, PlotDriven Fiction vs. Great Literary,

Thematic, Character-Driven Fiction:
It is considered literary if it looks

harder to do.
If I could write a great commercial novel or a great literary novel, I would be
doing that now instead of writing this blog. But I cant do either. Im writing
this blog to find out how its done. And finding out, for me, is fun.
What Ive found so far is that most novelists have multiple personality. Do
literary novelists have more complex multiple personality systems than genre
novelists? Did Henry James have a more complex system than J. R. R.
Tolkien? I dont think so.
Do literary novelists treat more important issues, and have greater insight,
than commercial novelists? That seems unlikely, since most literary novels are
not initially conceived as a way to deal with important issues, and most
literary novelists are not philosophers.
Novels are considered literary if they look harder to do. Marcel Proust is
considered more literary than Agatha Christie, because it looks easier to write
what Christie wrote. But, for Proust, writing what Christie wrote would have
been impossibly difficult.
Neither great commercial novelists nor great literary novelists mechanically
construct their characters. Nor do they control their characters like puppets.
Their characters come to them, not from them (subjectively speaking). Their
characters, and various narrative voices, are co-authors (subjectively
speaking). If their characters and narratorsalternate personalitiesprefer
genre formats or literary formats, thats not the novelists (regular selfs)
choice alone.
I admire great novelists, both commercial and literary, because very few
people with multiple personality (and hardly anyone without multiple
personality) can write great novels of any kind.
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Salman Rushdies Midnights

I was wrong about the Archangels, of coursethe voices in my head far

Salman Rushdies Midnights

Magical Realism and Telepathy:

that case, A could communicate with B anonymously, in either of two ways.

Magical Realism and Multiple

American Psychiatric Associations

What would happen if novelists

Galya Diments Autobiographical

the divided-they-stand approach of the writers discussed in this study, and

Mikhail Bakhtin is the closest that

So, I am hereby amending my last post on twenty textbooks of literary theory.

Twenty Textbooks on Literary Theory

Definition of Memory Gap: When a

Failure to diagnose dissociative

Books That Illustrate the Problem

Salman Rushdies Interviews: On

Divided Self in Midnight's

I decided to put on makeup. It was an unusual reaction. I didnt wear makeup

Nobel Prize novelist Thomas

Myth of the Cultural Construction of

But Sybil portrayed multiple personality as extremely rare. Otherwise, what

American psychiatrists in the 1970s and 1980s thought of multiple personality

Credibility: What is the minimum

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Ian Hackings Rewriting the Soul:

Either What I Say Cant Be True

Skepticism by Some Psychiatrists

Personality is Based on Their Not

psychiatrists skepticism about multiple personality is based on dont ask,

Is Multiple Personality a fad and a

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Multiple Personality Stands the Test

Which is Longest Standing, Most

Some literary fictionby Marcel

Great Commercial, Genre, PlotDriven Fiction vs. Great Literary,

It is considered literary if it looks

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