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.

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Tuesday, March 7, 2017

Multiple Personality in 1950s: Shirley Jackson’s novel “The Bird’s Nest” (1954) preceded Thigpen & Cleckley’s nonfiction “The Three Faces of Eve” (1957).

To put the previous post on Joyce Carol Oates’ comments about Shirley Jackson in historical context: In the 1950s, in the whole world, there was only one real-life case of multiple personality known to the general public, Thigpen & Cleckley’s The Three Faces of Eve, published in 1957.

Shirley Jackson’s The Bird’s Nest, a novel explicitly about a person with multiple personality, was published in 1954. 

1. Wikipedia. The Bird’s Nest (1954 novel by Shirley Jackson) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bird's_Nest_(novel)
2. Thigpen, C.H. & Cleckley, H. (1954) A case of multiple personality. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 49, 135-51. Synopsis: http://www.holah.karoo.net/thigpen.htm
3. Thigpen, Corbett H. & Cleckley, Hervey M. The Three Faces of Eve. New York, McGraw Hill, 1957.
4. Wikipedia. "Lizzie" (1957 film). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lizzie_(1957_film)
5. Wikipedia. “The Three Faces of Eve” (1957 film). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Faces_of_Eve
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