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, June 17, 2018


Lucille’s “Familiar” in “Housekeeping” by Marilynne Robinson (post 2, cont.): In using this term, was the author erudite, sneaky, or truthful?

Erudite
Many educated people are familiar with the term “familiar” as it is used in Housekeeping and Jane Eyre. It is so well known that it has its own entry in Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Familiar_spirit

Sneaky
But the term’s most common use is in stories about witches. And when something is out of its usual context, it is often ignored; for example, few readers notice its use in Jane Eyre.

So Marilynne Robinson may have assumed, correctly, that few if any readers of Housekeeping would know what was meant by Lucille’s having a “familiar.”

Truthful
Marilynne Robinson would probably say that her characters are the way they are, and that in saying Lucille had a familiar, Ruth was simply telling the truth.
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