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 13, 2018


“Nineteen Eighty-Four” by George Orwell (post 8): Did Orwell really believe that the basis of his novel was totalitarianism and not multiple personality?

In a recent post, I questioned how well authors understand their characters, because their process of creating characters is partially a mystery to them.

But it is not just characters. Authors may not understand the basis of their whole novel. For example, George Orwell promoted a political/sociological interpretation of his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. And most critics have accepted totalitarianism as what the novel is obviously about.

Yet if you search “Orwell” in this blog and read my posts, you will see that the novel is about multiple personality. Was Orwell unaware of this? I don’t know.

For example, was he unaware that his “Doublethink” is just a repackaged version of “double consciousness,” which had been a common synonym for multiple personality? Search “doublethink” and “double consciousness” in this blog.

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