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, April 9, 2016

The truth about alcohol (or other drugs) and changes in personality: “When he drinks, he becomes a monster” vs. “When he becomes a monster, he drinks”

According to conventional wisdom and Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde, drugs or alcohol can turn people into monsters, because everyone has a dark side, and the drugs or alcohol bring it out. But everyone does not turn into a monster when drinking or using drugs, because conventional wisdom and Stevenson have it backward. The more likely scenario is that some people switch to a monstrous alternate personality who likes to drink or use drugs.

Postscript (added later the same day): The obnoxious personality may drink or use drugs for one or more of the following reasons. First, the personality may have originated in imitation of someone who drank or used drugs. Second, the personality may genuinely like the alcohol or drugs. Third, the alcohol or drugs may incapacitate the regular personality, helping the obnoxious personality take control.

That third reason may look like Stevenson was right after all. But no, in the Jekyll and Hyde model or Freudian model, Hyde resides in the "unconscious" or is the person's "id"; whereas, in multiple personality, the alternate personalities are always conscious, behind the scenes, often monitoring what is going on with the regular personality, and looking for their chance to take control.

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