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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Saturday, January 21, 2017

“Trump, Sworn In, Issues A Call: ‘This American Carnage Stops,’ ” says New York Times front page headline: But why does Trump think there is carnage?

The front page of today’s New York Times is topped by a banner headline about yesterday’s presidential inauguration: “Trump, Sworn In, Issues A Call: ‘This American Carnage Stops.’ ” And since the USA is not a scene of carnage, the implication is that President Trump is either a demagogue or out of touch with reality. But there is a third possibility.

Readers of this blog know I have speculated about the possibility that Trump has multiple personality (ever since I read that he used to call people on the telephone using different names for himself). So my explanation for his talk about carnage relates to multiple personality.

Another name for multiple personality would be multiple reality, because each personality has its own view of reality. For example, a child-aged alternate personality—let’s say age seven; forever frozen at age seven—may view reality as always being like it actually was for that person back in the year when he was seven. 

If at age seven, the person had experienced or witnessed carnage of some sort, then that personality, forever living in the reality of that year, may continue to view the world in terms of carnage.

Meanwhile, the person’s other personalities have other views of reality. Those personalities who see themselves as being the person’s actual adult age and who are living in the present year, when there is no carnage, will view reality like everyone else. In short, having multiple personalities entails having multiple realities.

When a person writes, he may have input from all of his personalities.

You can see why multiple personality would be advantageous to novelists, who need alternate realities to write bestsellers and win Nobel prizes.

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