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, December 6, 2015

When hearing voices—auditory hallucinations—masquerades as metaphor: The case of Sigmund Freud and his “voice of the intellect…signifies not a little.”

As previously discussed in many posts, novelists often speak of “voice” as though it were just a metaphor, but they are really talking about hearing voices. In yesterday’s post, I discussed the voice heard by that man of reason, Socrates, since childhood (multiple personality starts in childhood). Today, I note this famous quote:

"The voice of the intellect is a soft one, but it does not rest until it has gained a hearing. Ultimately, after endlessly repeated rebuffs, it succeeds. This is one of the few points in which it may be optimistic about the future of mankind, but in itself it signifies not a little."
— Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion (1927)

People who do not have multiple personality do not hear a rational voice in their head, which is the voice of an alternate personality speaking from behind the scenes.

Are there any other reasons to suspect that Freud had multiple personality? There are many. See my essay on Freud in this blog.

The reason I mention Socrates and Freud in this blog is that I want to make it clear that novelists are not the only ones who have a normal version of multiple personality.
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