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.

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Friday, March 6, 2015

Post #2 on the “Hilary Trench” Alternate Personality of Graham Greene, another Great Novelist who had Multiple Personality

“When Vivien [his future wife] first met Greene, three different personalities must have been evident to her: the first what Greene described as ‘the Oxford me’, an undergraduate persona characterized by a devil-may-care, tongue-in-cheek delight in pricking Oxford pomposities, sometimes by the pose of insouciance; the second the richer, more ambiguous person described in this chapter; and the third hinted at in scattered references—the Hilary Trench personality…"

Greene wrote to reassure Vivien that she “need never be afraid of meeting H[ilary] T[rench] in our house. Poor devil, he can never come anywhere near you, even if he is alive, which he isn’t. O it’s no use writing. I’ve got to be with you to convince you that he’s dead. He’s been dying since March 17 [that is, the day they met]…

“But he did not succeed in persuading Vivien that his secret personality would not return, though he deeply regretted the sudden assumption of this secret self…

“…the Hilary Trench personality…usually made its appearance after deep anxiety had been prolonged to a point where Greene could stand it no longer, and this began before he met Vivien…

“On other occasions Greene’s notion of Hilary Trench seems less severe and is more in line with seeking both an escape from intolerable restlessness and also new experiences to use for creative purposes…” (1, pp. 276-277).

1. Norman Sherry. The Life of Graham Greene. Volume I: 1904-1939. New York, Penguin Books, 1989.
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