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

“The Illusion of Independent Agency” by Taylor, Hodges, Kohanyi: The best article ever published by psychologists on the psychology of creative writing

I first cited the article in my post of August 18, 2013:

The Illusion of Independent Agency: Do adult fiction writers experience their
characters as having minds of their own?

Marjorie Taylor, Sara D. Hodges, Adele Kohanyi
Imagination, Cognition and Personality, Vol 22(4) 361-380, 2002-2003

Yes, ninety-two percent of the fifty fiction writers did experience that. They interacted with, and heard the voices of, their characters. They provided dramatic examples of characters who not only composed their own life histories, but also attempted to take control of the plot away from the writer. Some of the characters were even experienced by the writers as “leaving the pages of the writers’ stories to inhabit the writers’ everyday worlds (e.g., wandering around the house).”

Of course, the article itself is much richer than the above blurb. And so here are two links to the complete, original article:

http://imaginarycompanions.uoregon.edu/files/2014/07/TaylorHodgesKohanyi-130mpe0.pdf

http://socialcognitionlab.uoregon.edu/files/2013/03/Taylor-Hodges-Kohanyi_2003-2b6wdel.pdf

This classic article, like this blog, is not just for psychologists, but for anyone interested in how fiction is actually written.
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