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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Sunday, July 22, 2018


“Parts” in “The Woman in Cabin 10” by Ruth Ware (post 2): Protagonist in mirror, not just one personality weighing factors, but three “parts” who differ

Many people with multiple personality don’t like the idea of having multiple personality. So they employ euphemisms. In English, the most common euphemism for an alternate personality is “part.” They won’t say they have alternate personalities, but they will say they have parts:

“Making myself up for dinner that night…

“Part of me, a big part, wanted to go and huddle beneath my duvet—the idea of making small talk with a group of people containing a potential murderer, eating food served by someone who might have killed a woman last night—that thought was terrifying…

“But another, more stubborn part refused to give in. As I applied mascara…I found myself searching in my reflection for the angry, idealistic girl…thinking of the dreams I’d had of becoming an investigative reporter…But how could I look that girl in the mirror in the eye, if I didn’t have the courage to get out there and investigate a story that was staring me in the face?…

“Besides, as I shut the bathroom door behind me and put on my evening shoes, a smaller, more selfish part of me was whispering that I was safest in company. No one could harm me in front of a room full of witnesses” (1, pp. 202-203).

In the above, the mirror is noteworthy. Persons with multiple personality may sometimes see alternate personalities when they look in the mirror. Search “mirror” and “mirrors” for past discussions.

1. Ruth Ware. The Woman in Cabin 10. New York, Scout Press, 2016.
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