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.

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Sunday, May 29, 2016

Multiperspectivity, Multiple Narrators, Multiple Points of View, Multiple Voices, Rounded Characters: Persons without multiple personality could not do it.

Since you could not intentionally create your own personality—including its perspective and point of view—it is a good thing that your brain knew how to do that, and did so.

In childhood, you can see the brain practicing its ability to create personalities in the normal phenomenon of imaginary companions.

In most people, one personality is enough, so as the person grows up, additional personalities are no longer generated, and the ability to do so is lost.

However, if there is childhood trauma, the ability to generate extra personalities may be maintained for the rest of the person’s life, a condition known as multiple personality.

In a small minority of cases, the multiple personality causes distress and dysfunction, and is a treatable mental illness. In a majority of cases, it does not cause distress or dysfunction, and may even be an asset; for example, in writing novels.

Multiple personality enables novelists to have multiperspectivity, multiple narrators, multiple points of view, multiple voices, and rounded characters.

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