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.

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— If you read only recent posts, you miss most of what this site has to offer.

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Monday, August 11, 2014

Did Prince Hamlet Kill His Father and Frame His Uncle?

In my August 1, 2014 post, I speculated about Hamlet as though he were a real person. It allowed me to discuss relevant issues related to multiple personality.

Now, after re-reading that post, the possibility occurs to me that Hamlet killed his father (and that his uncle was innocent).

I don’t know if others have thought of this before, but I assume they must have, since the play has been discussed for more than four hundred years. I don’t know what motive the others gave.

My proposed motive has to do with the fact that people often develop multiple personality because of traumatic experiences in childhood. In some cases the parents are not to blame; in other cases they are.

So suppose King Hamlet had been an abusive father. This raises the possibility that Prince Hamlet had an alternate personality who took revenge.

If Hamlet was really out of town at the time of the murder—a good alibi—then he would have employed an assassin.
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