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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Sunday, July 5, 2015

Walker Percy (post 2): What do novelists have in common with pseudonymous, existentialist, philosopher Soren Kierkegaard?

“…Soren Kierkegaard, perhaps the greatest single intellectual influence in his life…” (1, p. 174).

1. Jay Tolson. Pilgrim in the Ruins: A Life of Walker Percy. New York, Simon and Schuster, 1992.

What interests me about Kierkegaard was his extensive use of pseudonyms. Did it indicate that he had multiple personality? Or was it just an early 19th century rhetorical device? Or both? Did his interest to novelists have anything to do with his use of pseudonyms and their relationship with multiple personality? (Search “pseudonyms” in this blog for previous discussions.)

According to Wikipedia:

“Kierkegaard [1813-1855] has also had a considerable influence on 20th-century literature. Figures deeply influenced by his work include W. H. Auden, Jorge Luis Borges, Don DeLillo, Hermann Hesse, Franz Kafka, David Lodge, Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, Rainer Maria Rilke, J.D. Salinger and John Updike…

“Kierkegaard's early work was written under various pseudonyms that he used to present distinctive viewpoints and to interact with each other in complex dialogue. He explored particularly complex problems from different viewpoints, each under a different pseudonym…

“Kierkegaard published some of his works using pseudonyms and for others he signed his own name as author…Pseudonyms were used often in the early 19th century as a means of representing viewpoints other than the author's own…

“Kierkegaard's most important pseudonyms, in chronological order, were:
Victor Eremita, editor of Either/Or
A, writer of many articles in Either/Or
Judge William, author of rebuttals to A in Either/Or
Johannes de silentio, author of Fear and Trembling
Constantine Constantius, author of the first half of Repetition
Young Man, author of the second half of Repetition
Vigilius Haufniensis, author of The Concept of Anxiety
Nicolaus Notabene, author of Prefaces
Hilarius Bookbinder, editor of Stages on Life's Way
Johannes Climacus, author of Philosophical Fragments and Concluding Unscientific Postscript
Inter et Inter, author of The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress
H.H., author of Two Minor Ethical-Religious Essays
Anti-Climacus, author of The Sickness Unto Death and Practice in Christianity. “
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