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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Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Scott Barry Kaufman, James C. Kaufman (Eds.) The Psychology of Creative Writing: None of 31 contributors cites “The Illusion of Independent Agency”

John Baer               Jane Piirto
Michael V. Barrios      Jonathan A. Plucker
Genevieve E. Chandler   Samaneh Pourjalali
James C. Kaufman        Steven R. Pritzker
Scott Barry Kaufman     Mark A. Runco
Adele Kohanyi           Sandra W. Russ
Aaron Kozbelt           R. Keith Sawyer
E. Thomas Lawson        Pat Schneider
Martin S. Lindauer      Janel D. Sexton
Todd Lubart             Dean Keith Simonton
David Jung McGarva      Jerome L. Singer
Sharon S. McKool        E. M. Skrzynecky
Daniel Nettle           Robert J. Sternberg
James W. Pennebaker     Ai-Girl Tan
Susan K. Perry          Grace R. Waitman
                        Thomas B. Ward

It is not just that none of these eminent scholars cited that specific article—“The Illusion of Independent Agency” (2) (and see earlier post today)—but that none of them discussed the kinds of things reported in that article; i.e., the kinds of things that fiction writers commonly say about how their mind works in their creative writing process.

Why do these 31 brilliant scholars have this blindspot? Probably because they have no theory or framework—like Multiple Identity Literary Theory (the theory of this blog)—within which “the illusion of independent agency” makes sense.

Indeed, the authors of the article I’m praising evidently did not fully appreciate that what they call “the illusion of independent agency” is the essence of multiple personality, and that what they found in 92% of fifty fiction writers is a normal version of that.

1. Scott Barry Kaufman, James C. Kaufman (Editors). The Psychology of Creative Writing. Cambridge University Press, 2009.
2. Marjorie Taylor, Sara D. Hodges, Adele Kohanyi. “The Illustion of Independent Agency: Do Adult Fiction Writers Experience Their Characters as Having Minds of Their Own?” Imagination, Cognition and Personality, Vol. 22(4) 361-380, 2002-2003.
http://imaginarycompanions.uoregon.edu/files/2014/07/TaylorHodgesKohanyi-130mpe0.pdf
http://socialcognitionlab.uoregon.edu/files/2013/03/Taylor-Hodges-Kohanyi_2003-2b6wdel.pdf
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