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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Monday, July 18, 2016

Dickens’ (post 5) “Tale of Two Cities” (post 3): Dr. Manette has a relapse of his multiple personality, but there is still no reason for him to have multiple personality.

Years after Dr. Manette’s release from prison, during which time he has functioned normally as a physician, his daughter, with his approval, has just married Darnay.

However, something said to him by Darnay seems to be the precipitant of a switch back to his prison shoemaker, alternate personality.

“The door of [Dr. Manette’s] room opened, and he came out with Charles Darnay. He was so deadly pale—which had not been the case when they went in together—that no vestige of color was to be seen in his face…

“…it was the old scared look…his absent manner…

“…‘O me! All is lost!’ cried [Miss Pross], wringing her hands…‘He doesn’t know me, and is making shoes!’…(1, pp. 199-200)

After nine days, Dr. Manette switches back to his regular personality, with no memory—a typical multiple personality memory gap—for those nine days.

There is still no explanation in the novel for why Dr. Manette has been given multiple personality, per se, rather than, for example, recurrent depression, posttraumatic flashbacks, or feelings of revenge. Multiple personality, which has a childhood onset, is not something that an adult would get from imprisonment.

1. Charles Dickens. A Tale of Two Cities. New York, Signet Classics, 2007.
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