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, November 21, 2016

“The Host” by Stephenie Meyer: Host Personality, Melanie, and Alternate Personality, Wanderer, are in conflict in this Multiple Personality story.

“The two main characters,” says Stephenie Meyer, “who are, you know, sharing a body have things I want to be and things I wish I weren’t…You have Melanie, who’s really, really strong physically — and I wish I could be like her because she can do anything. Nothing stops her. She’s really, really strong emotionally, so she can handle anything. But she also can be really mean. Whereas Wanderer, the other personality, is totally compassionate, absolutely cannot hurt another person, and is just as kind as I would wish to be. But she’s weak, too…And so they both have things that I want and things that I wish I didn’t have” (1, pp. 179-180).

Judging by the biography, neither Stephenie Meyer nor her novel ever mentions multiple personality. Wanderer is supposed to be an alien soul who has come to Earth to take possession of Melanie’s body. There is no acknowledgement that two-personalities-in-one-body is multiple personality.

 1. Chas Newkey-Burden. Stephenie Meyer: Queen of Twilight. The Biography. London, John Blake, 2010.
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