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, May 21, 2017

If, as Alison Gopnik says, “4-Year-Olds Don’t Act Like Trump,” then perhaps he acts like pseudo-child alternate personalities common in multiple personality.

For the sake of discussion, I will assume that Prof. Gopnik does not present an overly idealized view of children in her New York Times article (1). She implies that New York Times columnists and others have been mistaken to compare some of President Trump’s behavior to that of real children.

But that raises the question of whether Trump’s behavior is like some sort of unreal children.

Unreal children are commonly found in adults with multiple personality. The most common kind of alternate personality is the child-aged alter, because multiple personality starts in childhood.

According to DSM-5 (the psychiatric diagnostic manual), clinical multiple personality (a nonpsychotic, dissociative disorder) is more common than schizophrenia (a well-known psychosis). I argue in this blog that a normal version of multiple personality is probably present in 90% of novelists, and possibly 30% of the general public. And as previously discussed, the latter might include Trump.

1. Alison Gopnik. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/opinion/sunday/4-year-olds-children-trump-gopnik.html
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