Gratuitous Multiple Personality (Major Concepts in Literary Criticism): Characters have symptoms of multiple personality, but the author did not intend it.

If a character in a novel has signs and symptoms of multiple personality, is labelled as having multiple personality by a narrator or character, and if multiple personality is integral to the plot, then it is an intentional literary device, and does NOT imply that the author has multiple personality.

In contrast, if a character in a novel has signs and symptoms of multiple personality, but is not labelled as having multiple personality, is not recognized by any narrator or character as having multiple personality, and if multiple personality is not integral to the plot, then the novel has what I call “gratuitous multiple personality.”

Most of the literature I have discussed in this blog has gratuitous multiple personality. Two examples are Graham Greene’s The Third Man (the novel, not the movie) and Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl.

Search “The Third Man” and “Gone Girl.”

Why would a novel have gratuitous multiple personality? My theory is that the author thinks of it as ordinary psychology, because the author has multiple personality.

For some such authors, I have found biographical evidence of multiple personality. For others, biographical information is limited, and my inference that they have multiple personality is a hypothesis.