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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Monday, May 12, 2014

In Multiple Personality, how many identities is normal? Does a Great Novel have few characters or many?

The number of identities or characters can range from two to thousands, but it doesn’t correlate with anything.

However, I would make two generalizations. First, there are only a limited number of identities or characters who are well-developed. Second, there are probably more identities or characters—sometimes many more—than you meet at first.

In multiple personality, you might initially meet two identities. If this were the nineteenth century, and the two cerebral hemispheres—like two brains!—was big news, you might be inclined to stop looking after you found these two identities, and declare it a case of dual consciousness.

But if you remain open-minded, you will soon realize that the person has engaged in witnessed behaviors, and has various other documented issues, that can’t be accounted for by either of these two identities. And you will eventually meet the identities that do account for these things.

I have seen people who had only a dozen identities, others who had dozens, and one who had hundreds. The one who had hundreds did just as well.

In short, the number of identities is no more significant than the number of characters in a novel.
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