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 8, 2016

Unpredictable: This may be a symptom of multiple personality—different personalities differ—so saying you intend to be unpredictable may be a cover story.

One reason that multiple personality is usually undiagnosed is that people who have it come up with good cover stories.

Among the main clues to multiple personality are a puzzling inconsistency and memory gaps. What would be good cover stories?

As discussed in past posts, Mark Twain, who gave many interviews, had the humorous cover story that he was an intentional liar. William Faulkner, who avoided interviews, because he might contradict himself, had the cover story that an artist should be known only by his art.

Traditionally, people tout their consistency and don’t want to be called flip-floppers. So it may be a cover story—to cover up multiple personality—if someone says that he intends to be unpredictable.
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