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.

Saturday, December 6, 2014

Who will agree, publicly, that great novelists have multiple personality? A Novelist? Scholar? Therapist? Person who knew a novelist? From what country?

To me, one of the most interesting things about writing this blog is the question of who will be first to agree, publicly, with its thesis. And when?

Will it be a novelist? Or have novelists concluded that the public isn’t ready. After all, when a few of them—in novels, nonfiction, and interviews—have virtually announced that they have multiple personality, the public has ignored them and acted like it doesn’t want to know.

Will it be a scholar? Or do scholars think that multiple personality is too controversial, that the label would devalue the object of their scholarship, and that they would only anger and/or be ridiculed by their colleagues?

Will it be a mental health professional who has treated novelists? Probably not, since most psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers are as ignorant about multiple personality, and as unable to recognize and diagnose it, as I used to be during my first twelve years in psychiatric practice. Besides, there is the issue of confidentiality, which must be honored.

Will it be the friend or family of a novelist? Or have they failed to recognize the multiple personality? And even if they have recognized it, would they be breaking a confidence? I don’t want anyone to break a confidence.

What country will the person come from? At first, this blog was visited mostly from the USA; then by 50% from the USA; but now mostly from other countries around the world. Although the USA has the biggest reputation, psychiatrically, for recognizing multiple personality, there are other countries whose culture is more accepting of the idea that people are, psychologically or spiritually, multiple or divided.

In any case, I will continue to read various novelists for this blog, since most of the books are enjoyable and teach me something I hadn't known.

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