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, October 10, 2016

Michiko Kakutani’s New York Times Review of Elena Ferrante’s Frantumaglia: Quote from book implies Ferrante (post 6) has multiple personality.

Michiko Kakutani (New York Times, October 10, 2016) reviews Elena Ferrante’s latest book, Frantumaglia (meaning “a jumble of fragments”) — a collection described by its publisher as “consisting of over 20 years of letters, essays, reflections, and interviews” (1).

Quote from book: “When one stops writing one becomes oneself again, the person one usually is, in terms of occupations, thoughts, language. Thus I am now me again, I am here, I go about my ordinary business, I have nothing to do with the book, or, to be exact, I entered it, but I can no longer enter it” (1).

Kakutani thinks the above is “pretentious” (1). I think it describes the switch from the alternate personality (“Elena Ferrante”) to the regular personality (Anita Raja?).

1. Michiko Kakutani. “Review: Elena Ferrante Wants Privacy. Her New Book Implies Otherwise.” http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/11/books/review-elena-ferrante-frantumaglia.html
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