Novels and Multiple Personality depend on the same Childhood Talents

Writing a novel is usually thought of as involving adult literary skills, and it does, but that is not the whole story. To provide the rest of the story, Multiple Identity Literary Theory proposes that novelists have multiple personality, which starts in childhood and entails certain talents that are equally integral to multiple personality and to writing novels.

Multiple Identity Talents

1. autonomous fictional playmates (aka companions or friends)

2. autonomous fictional identities

3. autonomous fictional worlds (aka paracosm)

Autonomy is emphasized. The child experiences the fictional playmate as having a mind of its own. Fictional identities are autonomous in that a child assumes the identity of a fictional character, remains in-character for an extended period of time, and experiences this, at least to some degree, as being beyond their control. The fictional worlds begin as something imagined, but take on a life of their own.

I do not use the word “imaginary,” as in “imaginary playmates,” because the word connotes that the one doing the imagining retains a complete sense of control over the process and over what is imagined. And it is the loss of that sense of control, and the sense that the fiction has taken on a life of its own, which is the key aspect that I am emphasizing.

These are “multiple identity” talents, because they are the same talents that allow a person to develop multiple identity (aka multiple personality or dissociative identity).

In most children, these childhood talents fade away and are gone by adulthood. But they persist in more people than is generally realized. Why do they persist? It may be due to childhood trauma. And whether they develop into a normal multiple personality or into a multiple personality disorder may depend on the severity of the trauma.

The ability to develop fictional worlds is an obvious asset to a novelist. But I should explain, in regard to multiple personality, that many people with multiple personality have complex inner worlds where the identities live when they are not “out.” Like a novel.