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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Friday, February 6, 2015

Magical Realism and Telepathy: Persons with Multiple Personality May Believe in Telepathy due to Anonymous Thought-Transference

In yesterday’s post on magical realism in literature, I mentioned that persons with multiple personality, like novelists, may be familiar with telepathic (mind-reading) kinds of experience, because one of their identities may be co-conscious with another of their identities, and so can read the other identity’s mind.

But what if the co-consciousness between two identities is one-way (which often happens)? Suppose identity A can read the mind of identity B, but B doesn’t even know that A exists (and A wants to keep it that way). In that case, A could communicate with B anonymously, in either of two ways. First, A could speak to B audibly, in which case B would “hear voices.” Second, A could transfer thoughts or information directly into B’s mind, which B may interpret as having magically learned something by telepathy.

Thus, when characters in a magical realism novel experience telepathy, it may reflect the author’s experience with multiple personality.
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