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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Friday, April 28, 2017

New York Times columnists inadvertently describe President Trump as having behavior suggestive of multiple personality: “6-year-old” and “protean man.”

As I’ve noted in past posts (search “Trump”), a number of Times columnists have unintentionally suggested that President Trump has multiple personality.

There is a difference between calling someone immature and saying he is like a 6-year-old. The latter suggests the presence of a child-aged alternate personality (the most common kind of alternate personality, because multiple personality starts in childhood).

And to say that Trump is a “protean man” is to say that he changes like a person with multiple personalities.

Here is what they say:

“Fans of the old TV series may remember a classic ‘Twilight Zone’ episode…It featured a small town terrorized by a 6-year-old who for some reason had monstrous superpowers…And now you know what it must be like working in the Trump administration. Actually, it feels a bit like that just living in Trump’s America” (1).

“He is the ultimate protean man” (2).

Of course, none of this proves that Trump has multiple personality (a normal version). But it continues to raise the question, inadvertently.

1. Paul Krugman. “Living in the Trump Zone.” https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/28/opinion/living-in-the-trump-zone.html?_r=0
2. David Brooks. “The Pond Skater Presidency.” https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/28/opinion/the-pond-skater-presidency.html
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