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, October 11, 2015

Childhood trauma is more common, and its effects, both physical and mental, are more diverse and pervasive than current literary theory appreciates

Literary theory already includes trauma studies (1). And many people have heard that holocausts, wars, torture, natural disasters, serious illness, injuries, and child abuse may increase the chances of having anxiety, depression, addiction, and identity problems.

But most people are not aware that childhood trauma, serious enough to have serious consequences, is relatively common:

http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/acestudy/prevalence.html

Moreover, most people do not appreciate the diversity of the consequences:

http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/childmaltreatment/consequences.html

Thus, when anyone is known to have had either childhood trauma or something that is more common in people who have had childhood trauma—depression, bipolar disorder, etc.—you have to consider whether they also have one of the other things that is more common after childhood trauma: multiple personality (whose two most common clues are a puzzling inconsistency and memory gaps, which, to find out about, you have to ask).

1. Gregory Castle. The Literary Theory Handbook. Wiley Blackwell, 2013.
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