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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Sunday, January 4, 2015

“Me, Me, Me and My Therapist: This is what it feels like to suffer from dissociative identity disorder” by Vivian Conan in today’s New York Times

“…Outside-Me was a competent grown-up in my 50s, involved with family and friends and holding two jobs…Inside-Me was a conglomerate of 10 or so people-parts whom I referred to variously as I, we, she, they or even ourself. I’d been that way ever since I could remember, but never thought to mention it to any of the five [previous] therapists I’d seen since I was 16.

“It wasn’t until my late 40s that I learned I had Dissociative Identity Disorder [Multiple Personality Disorder]…

“One of those Inside was Wendy, a precocious 6-year-old who, like her namesake in ‘Peter Pan,' was a caretaker. Wendy often dominated our [therapy] sessions, appointing herself speaker whenever she felt any of us was vulnerable. The moment we heard about [her therapist’s upcoming] sailing trip, she’d popped out to direct the interrogation…”

The above is from today's essay by Vivian Conan, who is working on a memoir.
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