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, April 9, 2018


“Where the Past Begins (A Writer’s Memoir) by Amy Tan (post 4): Chooses not to think of her “benevolent companion when I write” as an alternate personality.

“It makes sense I would seek companionship to help me sort through confusing ideas, thoughts, and beliefs, mine and others’. My characters are already like companions in that way, although I am always aware that they are fictional ones I created. Yet I have periodically felt I have with me a spiritual companion who drops hints and guides me toward revelations, ones I never would have stumbled upon. At times, I am alarmed to read sentences I do not recall writing, or, even more disturbing, when I read thoughts penned in my journal that I don’t remember thinking. The thoughts are not contrary to what I believe. It’s just that I don’t remember thinking about those things at that particular time or in quite that way—which often seems to be more insightful than I could ever be. This isn’t the flip side of my personality or a fragmented psyche. Whatever it is, I don’t need to analyze it any further. I simply welcome this benevolent companion when I write…” (1, pp. 164-165).

1. Amy Tan. Where the Past Begins: A Writer’s Memoir. New York, ecco/HarperCollins, 2017.
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