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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Tuesday, June 2, 2015

Freud famously said that the “voice” of reason is soft, but persistent. Was “voice” only a metaphor, or was it the voice of his alternate personality?

If multiples (people with multiple personality) have felt since childhood that they had other people inside them, and if singles have never felt that way, might each group assume that everyone must be like themselves?

For example, suppose there were a discussion about “finding one’s true voice” or “having a different voice” or “finding the right voice.” Multiples would be referring to a voice in their head, a voice of an alternate personality. But singles would assume that “voice” was just a metaphor.

When Freud said, “The voice of the intellect is a soft one, but it will not rest until it has gained a hearing. Finally, after a countless succession of rebuffs, it succeeds,” did he mean a voice that he heard in his head or was he only speaking metaphorically?

I had always assumed the latter, but since I deduced that Freud, himself, probably had multiple personality (search “Freud” in this blog to find my essay), I have come to suspect that the above quote refers to an alternate personality whom Freud considered his voice of reason.

At least that’s one theory for why some people (like novelists) are more inclined than other people to use the “metaphor” of voice.
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