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.

Saturday, January 28, 2017

Maureen Dowd, calling Donald Trump a “7-year-old wild child,” joins fellow New York Times columnist, David Brooks, in seeing Trump as childlike, not childish.

In my previous post, I quoted David Brooks as saying that the reason President Trump accepts “alternative facts” is that he is sometimes like a “5-year-old.”

It is significant that both Dowd and Brooks specify the age, because there is an important distinction between childish and childlike, and when you specify a particular age—“7-year-old” or “5-year-old”—the implication is childlike, not just childish.

Childish: a person who is acting like an immature adult.

Childlike: an adult who sometimes behaves at a child’s level of cognitive and social development; for example, like an adult in a fantasy story who has switched personalities with a child; or like a real-life adult with multiple personality who has switched to a child-aged alternate personality.

Dowd and Brooks would probably disavow my interpretation and insist they only meant that Trump sometimes acts immaturely. But their specifying the age—seven or five—supports my interpretation.

Search “childlike” to see a few previous posts.

Maureen Dowd. “Wild Child Takes Charge.” https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/28/opinion/sunday/wild-child-takes-charge.html?ref=opinion
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Thank you for taking the time to comment (whether you agree or disagree) and ask questions (simple or expert). I appreciate your contribution.

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)