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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Wednesday, January 18, 2017

Memoir by Nobel novelist J. M. Coetzee: Multiple Personality meaning of its Third-Person narration explained in “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” by Dickens.

Why is the protagonist of J. M. Coetzee’s memoir (1) “he” rather than “I”? Why would someone refer to himself in the third person?

In The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Charles Dickens planned to reveal the murderer’s multiple personality by having him refer to himself in the third person. Dickens assumed that the meaning of third-person self-reference—multiple personality—would be obvious to the average reader.

However, in reviews of Coetzee’s fictionalized memoir, I have not seen anyone raise the issue of multiple personality (usually using euphemisms) until the third part of this trilogy, Summertime, even though the third-person narration starts at the very beginning of the first part, Boyhood.

Having just started Boyhood, I will reserve further comment until I have read more.

1. J. M. Coetzee. Scenes from Provincial Life: Boyhood [1997], Youth [2002], Summertime [2009]. New York, Penguin Books, 2011.
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