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.

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Tuesday, February 3, 2015

What would happen if novelists publicly announced that they had multiple personality? Some have, but few take them seriously.

As previously discussed in this blog, a few writers have—more or less, directly or indirectly—gone public. But when J. M. Barrie spoke publicly about his alternate personality, it was treated as a joke. When Sue Grafton said that she had alternate personalities, the public mostly ignored it. When Margaret Atwood wrote that all fiction writers have a split personality, and when she, Philip Roth, Dean Koontz, and others published novels that featured multiple personality, few made much of it.

The public probably doesn’t believe that novelists have multiple personality, because they think it would interfere with a person’s ability to function. And since J. M. Barrie, Sue Grafton, Margaret Atwood, Philip Roth, and Dean Koontz have obviously functioned very well—indeed, at a very high level—how could they have had multiple personality? The answer is that most people with multiple personality are normal. And some are gifted.
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