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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Monday, June 19, 2017

Jeanette Winterson defends Elena Ferrante’s right to be two distinct personalities, because “Writing is an act of splitting…Writers are multiple personalities”

“And I go on calling Elena Ferrante Elena Ferrante because that is who she wishes to be. She has been very clear about why she has chosen to be two people – one of whom can be known through her books, and one of whom cannot be known at all. Writing is an act of splitting – like mercury. Writers are multiple personalities” (1).

1. Jeanette Winterson. “The malice and sexism behind the ‘unmasking’ of Elena Ferrante.” The Guardian, October 7, 2016. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/07/unmasking-elena-ferrante

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