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, August 26, 2018


“The Accidental Tourist” by Anne Tyler (post 3): “He began to think that who you are when you’re with somebody may matter more than whether you love her”

Toward the end of the novel, Macon reflects on the fact (see previous post) that when he lives with Muriel, his personality is fundamentally different than when he lives with Sarah (his wife of many years):

“He began to think that who you are when you’re with somebody may matter more than whether you love her” (1, p. 307).

Notice: He does not speak of how a person feels when with one person or another, but who a person is when with one person or another.

Everyone feels different in different circumstances and with different people. But it is the person with multiple personality who switches among different senses of personal identity.

Thus, the author has raised the issue of multiple personality without acknowledging it and apparently without intending to do so. Why? It may reflect her own psychology.

1. Anne Tyler. The Accidental Tourist [1985]. New York, Berkley Books, 1986.
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