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.

— Share site with friends.

Saturday, July 28, 2018


“Long Black Veil” by Jennifer Finney Boylan (post 7): Another character has an internal dialogue with an alternate personality that has a mind of its own

Rachel, the woman to whom Quentin had proposed, is a college professor who teaches a class on the Italian Renaissance. At a museum, she sees Leonardo’s St. John the Baptist, on loan from the Louvre, where she had seen it six times previously. Rachel feels that “the androgynous young man…looked directly into her soul”…making her feel…“lightheaded, transfixed” (1, p. 63).

For nine pages, Rachel engages in an internal dialogue with St. John the Baptist, who, among other things, says, “I just want you to become yourself” (1, p. 66).

So Quentin/Judith is not the only character in this novel who holds internal dialogues with alternate personalities—they appear to have minds of their own—who help them with relationships and identity.

1. Jennifer Finney Boylan. Long Black Veil. New York, Crown, 2017.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Thank you for taking the time to comment (whether you agree or disagree) and ask questions (simple or expert). I appreciate your contribution.

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)