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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Monday, June 20, 2016

Josephine Tey, Gordon Daviot, F. Craigie Howe, Elizabeth MacKintosh (post 3): Jennifer Morag Henderson says, “She made many lives for herself…”

“As Josephine Tey and Gordon Daviot enjoyed themselves immensely in London, Beth [Elizabeth MacKintosh] made a reappearance as well…However, the different worlds—family, and theatrical and literary—did not overlap…Beth lived in an extraordinary space between two completely different worlds…” (1, pp. 6-7).

“Each of the letters from Beth to Dodie is signed ‘Gordon’, rather than ‘Beth’…One intriguing reference…talks about Daviot's ‘other half’, who is not encouraging when Daviot comes up with new ideas for plays. Beth MacKintosh sometimes comes up with new ideas, but the ‘other half’ of her personality, Gordon Daviot, rejects them. This same idea, of an inner contradictory voice, is present in the Josephine Tey novels for both Alan Grant and Brat Farrar, while Miss Pym talks about ‘her other half […] which stood watching her with critical eyes…’ ” (1, pp. 212-213).

“In 1945, Gordon Daviot decided to try out a third pseudonym. This third name was never revealed during her lifetime…In 1945, at the same time as she was carrying out negotiations…for Gordon Daviot's The Little Dry Thorn, Beth MacKintosh was also negotiating…for Cornelia, by F. Craigie Howe” (1, pp. 239-240).

“Elizabeth MacKintosh was Gordon Daviot the playwright and Josephine Tey the novelist, but she was also Beth…She made many lives for herself…” (1, p. 354).

1. Jennifer Morag Henderson. Josephine Tey: A Life. Scotland, Sandstone Press, 2015.
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