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.

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Friday, March 14, 2014

Review: Margaret Atwood, Sue Grafton, Doris Lessing, William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, Charles Dickens, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Mark Twain, and Most Other Novelists Appear to Have Had a Literary Form of Multiple Personality

As noted in previous posts: Margaret Atwood, in her nonfiction book on writing, wrote that novelists have multiple personality. Recently, Sue Grafton published Kinsey and Me, which, according to what she said in a TV interview, raises that issue for her, personally. As discussed in other posts, the other novelists mentioned above probably have had multiple personality, too. And it is almost routine for novelists, in their published interviews, to mention the autonomy of their characters, which is the essential characteristic of alternate personalities in multiple personality.

I find this interesting for two reasons. First, I’ve always admired novelists and wanted to know how novels are written, and it appears that having a version of multiple personality is almost a prerequisite for becoming a credible novelist. Second, I think it very unlikely that it is only novelists who have a form of multiple personality which does not require treatment and may even be an asset. It is my guess that 90% of novelists, but also 30% of the general public, have it. So what I am proposing is not only a literary theory, but also a psychological theory. It is not a new psychological theory — see posts on William James and mentions of Pierre Janet — but I think that the prevalence of multiple personality among novelists gives it new credibility.

What do you think? Your questions and comments are welcome.
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