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.

— Share site with friends.

Sunday, April 27, 2014

Multiple Personality suggested by how Homer's Odysseus fooled the Cyclops, by The Trojan Horse, and by the Greek Gods

The end of yesterday’s post prompts me to speculate about multiple personality in Ancient Greece.

If Homer’s character, Odysseus, used a multiple personality trick to fool the Cyclops, that suggests Homer had multiple personality.

The Trojan Horse might be taken as a metaphor for multiple personality, with the people inside the horse representing the person’s hidden personalities.

The Greek Gods may have originated as the alternate personalities of various poets. The gods are heard as voices, just as alternate personalities often are. They influence from behind the scenes, just as alternate personalities often do. And sometimes they come out and handle things themselves, just as alternate personalities sometimes do.
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