In Literary Interviews, Authors Say They Hear Voices: Is it Psychosis, Ordinary Imagination, or Multiple Personality?

In my first post, “Dickens, Multiple Personality, and Writers” (June 19, 2013), I reported that after Charles Dickens had mentioned to someone that he often heard the voices of his characters, they thought, since he was evidently having hallucinations, that he must be crazy.

However, since the 1950s, when in-depth author interviews began, authors have said this kind of thing so often that interviewers now shrug it off as a routine, normal feature of the writer’s imagination.

But it is NOT ordinary imagination like, for example, a daydream. In ordinary imagination, you willfully control what happens, whereas authors describe their characters, once they “come alive,” as not being simply puppets. They have minds of their own. They may disagree with the author and come up with things that the author hadn’t thought of.

If you can explain authors’ hearing the voices of their characters—an explanation other than Multiple Identity Literary Theory, the subject of this blog—please comment.