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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Monday, July 9, 2018


“The President is Missing” by Bill Clinton (post 2) and James Patterson (post 5): Prompts more speculation about Clinton and multiple personality

During Bill Clinton’s presidency, there were jokes and speculation about his having multiple personality, because he seemed to go from Jekyll to Hyde.

More recently, in 2015, an Off-Broadway musical was based on the premise that Clinton had multiple personality: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinton:_The_Musical

Now, on tour for the new book, Clinton mentions that he had enjoyed reading Patterson’s Alex Cross novels, more than one of which feature a character with multiple personality.

In creating The President is Missing, I don’t know whether Clinton was just a resource for realistic details or if he actually did some of the fiction writing. The latter would make multiple personality more likely.
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