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.

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Sunday, March 19, 2017

“A Separate Peace” by John Knowles (post 2): Only one character in the novel is nameless (no last name), and namelessness indicates multiple personality.

Multiple personality—in this novel and its author—is indicated by two indisputable facts: Gene sees Phineas in the mirror (see post 1) and Phineas has no last name.

Phineas is the only character in the novel who has no last name, and namelessness marks him as an alternate personality. Search “nameless” and “namelessness” in this blog to read the many past posts on this frequently recurring subject.

Many other things in this novel are consistent with a multiple personality interpretation, but all the other things are disputable.

For example, there is the title, “A Separate Peace.” If “peace” were read as “piece,” then the title would suggest that Phineas is a separate piece (an alternate personality) of Gene, and all the characters are separate pieces of the author.
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