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.

— Share site with friends.

Friday, October 14, 2016

Naming in Sarah Domet’s “The Guineveres”: Novel said to have nothing to do with multiple personality has four main characters named like alternate personalities.

Sarah Domet’s new first novel was just brought to my attention by its review in The New York Times. I was struck by the naming of its four main characters, each of whom is referred to by a variation of the same legal name:

“Four girls, each named Guinevere, are abandoned by their parents at a convent to be raised by nuns. Vere, Gwen, Ginny, and Win come to the Sisters of the Supreme Adoration convent by different paths. Each has her own complicated, heartbreaking story that she safeguards. And while they may share the same name, they couldn’t be more different. Gwen is all Hollywood glamour and swagger; Ginny is a budding artiste with a sentiment to match; Win’s tough bravado isn’t even skin deep; and Vere is the only one who seems to be a believer, grasping at the saint stories the nuns tell and trying to hold on to her faith that her mother will one day return for her. However, the girls are more than the sum of their parts and together they form their own family, the all-powerful and confident The Guineveres.” —from the author’s web site

Judging by the Times’ and other reviews, the novel has nothing to do with multiple personality. And according to what I see online of Sarah Domet’s 90 Days to Your Novel: A Day-by-Day Plan for Outlining & Writing Your Book (Writer's Digest Books, 2010), multiple personality is not part of the writing process that she uses or recommends. Nevertheless, the naming of her four Guineveres is similar to a common kind of naming in multiple personality:

In multiple personality, “Most personalities will have a name…in many cases, the names are some derivative of the legal name. So…Elizabeth Jane Doe might well have alter personalities…Lizzy, Lizzie, Liz, Betsie, Beth, Bets, Jane, Janie, Lizzy-Jane, and so on” (1, p. 116).

1. Frank W. Putnam MD. Diagnosis and Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder. New York, The Guilford Press, 1989.
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