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.

— Share site with friends.

Saturday, June 6, 2015

Physical Attractiveness and Sexual Stereotyping: A Post Prompted by Edith Wharton’s Character Lily Bart and Toni Morrison’s Character Bride

Wharton and Morrison describe these characters—in The House of Mirth and God Help the Child (see past posts)—as being uniquely beautiful, which is preposterous. The idea that any woman in a large city could be uniquely beautiful is, to use a literary term, magical realism. For unique beauty to be plausible, it would take a village, a small village. I live in a big city and there are beautiful women all over the place. Of course, when you read novels, you must believe fiction, which is part of the fun.

It was not so funny to Second Wave feminism, which was against a woman’s dressing like, or being treated as, a “sex object.” Beauty was a scam that was holding women back and down. But since beauty is powerful, and most women like to look pretty anyway, the feminist movement changed leader from Betty Friedan to Gloria Steinem.

If you are surprised to find such remarks in a blog like this, let me explain. Before I had a literary theory related to multiple personality, I had a theory about physical attractiveness and sexual stereotyping (1). So if any of the novels that I read for this blog happen to raise the issue, I will comment accordingly.

1. Kenneth Alan Nakdimen MD. The Physiognomic Basis of Sexual Stereotyping. American Journal of Psychiatry 141:499-503, April 1984
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Thank you for taking the time to comment (whether you agree or disagree) and ask questions (simple or expert). I appreciate your contribution.

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)