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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Saturday, November 21, 2015

J. K. Rowling (postscript): No, I had not read, and found multiple personality in, her first Harry Potter novel, before my first post on her pseudonyms

My first post on Rowling’s pseudonyms, in regard to Robert Galbraith, and my speculation that it suggested multiple personality, was back in February 2014, almost two years ago. Since then I have read and discussed one of her Galbraith books, in which I found suggestive evidence of multiple personality. Then I wrote a post quoting a book on the pervasive doppelgängers, the theme-of-the-double, in the Harry Potter series. And finally, earlier today, I wrote a post about the overt depiction of multiple personality at the climax of the first Harry Potter book.

Cynics may suspect that I had read the Harry Potter novel first, but mentioned it last, to make myself look good. But the truth is, I just finished that novel today, and had not known that the ending would depict multiple personality at all, and so prominently.

To me, it is not surprising that a novelist who uses pseudonyms would be found to have unacknowledged multiple personality in her novels. Since even novelists who don’t use pseudonyms often have multiple personality, the use of pseudonyms just increases the probability.

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