Multiple Identity Literary Theory

1. Perhaps 90% of fiction writers and 30% of the general public have normal multiple personality. It is more common in fiction writers, because it is an asset in that kind of work. Indeed, the cognitive talents evident in multiple personality—multiple consciousness, autonomous identities, imaginary worlds—are basic to how novels are written.

2. Normal multiple personality (not a mental illness) is distinguished from multiple personality disorder (the mental illness) in that the disorder involves significant distress and dysfunction, whereas the normal kind may be an asset; e.g., to write novels. Neither kind is a psychosis, because one or another identity is always in good touch with reality.

3. There are probably two factors that determine whether anyone gets multiple personality. The first factor is the natural talent for dissociation (trance-like states and dividedness of the self) often manifest in childhood by such phenomena as imaginary companions and imaginary worlds. Most children lose these abilities as they grow up, unless they have the second factor. The second factor is trauma (overwhelming experiences), either on multiple occasions or for an extended period of time. If the trauma occurs very young, is very severe, and there is inadequate emotional support, the result may be the disorder. If it occurs later in childhood, is less severe, and there is significant emotional support, then the normal version of multiple personality may result. If the first factor is very strong, then relatively ordinary kinds trauma may be sufficient to cause multiple personality, which explains why it may be present in as much as 30% of the general public. (The 90% and 30% figures are educated guesses.)

4. Thus, multiple personality starts in childhood, which is why one of the most common kinds of alternate personalities in adults with multiple personality is the child-aged alter, which, like Peter Pan, never grows up. Some alternate personalities originating in childhood do grow up. And other alternate personalities originate in adulthood (if the person already has multiple personality since childhood).

5. The best-known manifestation of normal multiple personality in novelists is autonomy of their characters. Their characters have a mind of their own and may disagree with the novelist’s regular personality. They are not constructed by the novelist, but just seem to appear. They may superficially resemble people the novelist has known or has heard of, but they are neither copies of those people nor methodical constructions by the novelist based on those people. They just come into being as autonomous psychological entities, like the alternate personalities in multiple personality. Their characteristics are usually not random: Like any alternate personality, they are usually suitable to the situations, feelings, and needs that are present at the time they come into being.

6. Many people with multiple personality have a regular so-called “host personality” (host, for short). When you don’t know that a person has multiple personality, this is the personality you think of as the person. It is the public relations personality, who does interviews. The host personality may have little or no knowledge of the other personalities, which are the “alternate personalities” (alters, for short). Indeed, the host may have amnesia, a memory gap, for any period of time that an alter has come out and temporarily taken over. (This is a generalization. Some hosts do know something about the system of alters.)

7. People with multiple personality disorder are famous (or notorious) for denying that they have multiple personality, especially when the host has amnesia for the others, while the others see themselves as other people, not alters. So you can talk to an alter, who will identify itself by name as being another person, and then talk to the host, who has no memory for the alter, and who therefore thinks that the idea of multiple personality is far-fetched. In general, multiple personality is hidden, not only from other people, but from the people with multiple personality, themselves.

8. People with normal multiple personality may have more self-awareness than people with the disorder. In the general public, this may take the form of a person’s knowing that they have retained an imaginary companion from childhood or that they have, for example, a guardian angel. Novelists are aware of their characters or their inner people, and may be aware of more than one writing self. They may converse with and interact with these other identities. Different identities may be in the driver’s seat at different times. This is most often during writing, but alters may also take part in everyday life (either incognito or under the guise of nicknames).

9. Although, to generalize, it probably is true that novelists with normal multiple personality have more awareness and co-consciousness among their identities than people with multiple personality disorder, I would not want to exaggerate the novelist’s self-awareness in this regard. Most novelists will not acknowledge—at least not for the public record—that they have multiple personality, even if you show them clear-cut evidence of it in their published writings. Maybe they can’t see it. Maybe they are just trying to protect their reputation. Maybe both.

10. Novelists often have their own way of putting themselves in the proper frame of mind to write. Some think of this as a sort of self-hypnosis. Others think of it simply as the way they get ready to write. What they may be doing is getting their host personality to step aside so they can access the world of their narrative and character identities.

11. In multiple identity theory, there is no “unconscious.” Rather, there is multiple consciousness: the separate, segregated consciousness of each identity. An analogy would be my consciousness vs. your consciousness. Since I can’t read your mind, I am not conscious of what you are thinking, but that doesn’t make your thoughts unconscious. In multiple personality, one identity may not be aware of another identity, but the other identity is aware of itself and is quite conscious.

12. Psychoanalysis, which believes in “the unconscious,” and not in multiple consciousness, cannot honestly account for how even one rare case of multiple personality could possibly ever exist. So any literary criticism having to do with multiple personality is not psychoanalytic. It is Multiple Identity Literary Theory.