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.

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Saturday, May 27, 2017

“Regeneration Trilogy” by Pat Barker (post 3): Mr. Sassoon, war hero and anti-war poet, is “three different people, and they all wanted to go different ways.”

I have just started the trilogy, and whether or not the author thinks of it in terms of multiple personality, per se, it looks like it may turn out to be her psychological theme.

In the military psychiatric hospital during WWI, one historical character, Dr. Rivers (1), interviews another historical character, Siegfried Sassoon, who is both a war hero “nicknamed ‘Mad Jack’ by his men for his near-suicidal exploits” and an anti-war poet (2).

In an initial interview, Rivers asks Sassoon about his background, and at one point Sassoon says, “It was like being three different people, and they all wanted to go different ways” (3, p. 33).

Dr. Rivers does not stop to explore the psychological implications of the above statement, but I am interested.

1. Wikipedia. “W. H. R. Rivers.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._H._R._Rivers
2. Wikipedia. “Siegfried Sassoon.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siegfried_Sassoon
3. Pat Barker. The Regeneration Trilogy: Regeneration [1991], The Eye in the Door [1993], The Ghost Road [1995]. London, Viking/Penguin, 1996.
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