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.

— Share site with friends.

Saturday, April 23, 2016

Why did Samuel Langhorne Clemens use pseudonyms? Does the “Autobiography of Mark Twain” mention his real name on its title page?

The question is not how Samuel Clemens chose Mark Twain as his pen name. The question is why he used any pen name at all, and why he used so many of them. 

The following list of his pen names was found online:

1. Mark Twain
2. Devil
3. Figaro
4. Fred Ballard
5. Grumbler
6. John Snooks
7. Josh
8. Moralist of the Main
9. Ramblr
10. S. Browne Jones
11. Sergeant Fathom
12. Soleather
13. Son of Adam
14. W. Epaminondas Adrastus Blab
15. W. Epamondas Adrastus Perkins
16. W.E.A.B
17. William Jones
18. Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass
Quintus Curius Snodgrass (discredited)
19. Carl Byng (possible)

In view of my recent posts, which relate the failure of an autobiography’s title page to mention the person’s real name to the person’s having multiple personality, I wonder whether the Autobiography of Mark Twain mentions Samuel Clemens on its title page.

[Note: Search "Mark Twain" to read a number of previous posts.]

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