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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— If you read only recent posts, you miss most of what this site has to offer.

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Wednesday, June 3, 2015

The Writer’s “Voice” is often a euphemism for multiple personality, but so is the “inner voice” discussed in books for the general public

Yesterday’s post on Freud’s “voice” of reason should have mentioned the post of May 4, 2014: Please search “writer’s voice” in this blog to find the post on Finding Your Writer’s Voice: A Guide to Creative Fiction by Thaisa Frank and Dorothy Wall (New York, St. Martin’s Press, 1994).

However, consistent with my contention that normal multiple personality is present in 90% of novelists, but also 30% of the general public: If you look up books for the general public with “inner voice” in the title, you will find many books listed.

Now, the critical distinction regarding inner voice is whether the person has a subjective sense 1) that the one and only self is talking to itself, or 2) that the regular self hears the voice of, or is conscious of the thoughts of, another self with a mind of its own.

Having more than one self with a mind of its own is the essence of multiple personality. And people with multiple personality sometimes hear the voices of, or are conscious of the thoughts of, their alternate personalities.
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