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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Wednesday, June 15, 2016

When Eleanor Marie Robertson—pseudonyms Nora Roberts, J.D. Robb, Jill March, and Sarah Hardesty—does book-signings, who signs Nora Roberts?

During a book-signing described in The New Yorker (1):

A girl approached carrying a souvenir tote bag. “Everybody’s reading Nora,” it said.

“J.D. is offended, but I’m not,” Roberts said. She added, in a stage whisper, “She’s a bitch, anyway.”

Now if, psychologically speaking, it had really been Nora Roberts doing the book-signing, it would not have made sense for her to say “but I’m not,” because it would be assumed that Nora Roberts would not be offended by a tote bag that said everyone was reading her books.

So if, psychologically speaking, it was neither Nora Roberts nor J.D. Robb doing the book-signing, who was it? Someone who thinks J.D. Robb is a bitch, anyway.

1. Lauren Collins. “Real Romance: How Nora Roberts became America’s most popular novelist.” The New Yorker, June 22, 2009.
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