Multiple Personality Trait: Fiction writers acknowledge “the madness of art,” a normal version of multiple personality. But the situation is like Darwin and evolution.

When in “The Middle Years,” Henry James’s fiction-writer character speaks of “the madness of art,” most readers think that all he is doing is praising, in a sad, self-deprecating way, the mystery of literary creativity. Most readers don’t notice that later in that passage the writer explains the mystery of literary creativity by making plural self-reference, which implies that the writer has multiple personality. Henry James elaborates his contention that fiction writers have multiple personality in “The Private Life.”

And I have previously quoted other fiction writers—e.g., Margaret Atwood and Stephen King—as saying something similar about literary creativity. So why have I bothered to make the case for multiple personality in over 150 writers? Writers themselves have already made and conceded the point.

First, few people believe writers when they say these things. Second, the example of fiction writers implies that multiple personality has a normal version, which is neither recognized nor studied by modern psychology. In short, the presence of multiple personality trait, in a sizable minority of the general public, is not yet widely accepted.

This blog is analogous to Darwin and evolution: He did not originate the idea of evolution. It was already well known. His own grandfather had written about it. But it was still not generally accepted. So Darwin painstakingly collected data, elaborated the theory, and helped it to become conventional wisdom.