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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Thursday, April 21, 2016

Hypotheses: More childhood trauma, multiple personality, polytheism vs. Less trauma and multiple personality, reflected in monotheism or atheism.

Is there any relationship between the percentage of a population that has multiple personality and whether it is polytheistic, monotheistic, or atheistic?

Would a culture in which most of the people had multiple personality be more likely to be polytheistic? Would a culture in which only a minority of the people had multiple personality be more likely to be monotheistic? Would the population with the lowest percentage of multiple personality have the highest percentage of atheists?

The historical trend from polytheism to monotheism to atheism is usually attributed to the advance of science. But is it also related to a decrease in childhood trauma, leading to a decrease in multiple personality?

Are novelists, a group that has a high percentage of multiple personality (but usually a normal version), more religious—at least more spiritual, mystical, or magical thinking—than the general population?

Note: Search “varieties of religious experience” (title of the book by William James) for related past posts.
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