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, September 23, 2018

The Double in literary criticism and The Trinity in Christian theology: Multiple personality is suspected in the former, but never in the latter 

“According to the church father Augustine anyone who denies the Trinity is in danger of losing her salvation, but anyone who tries to understand the Trinity is in danger of losing her mind” (1, p. 1).

And since “There is no mention of the word ‘Trinity’ in the New Testament” (1, p. 6), how did The Trinity become central to Christian theology?

Is it an interpretation of what the New Testament does mention: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit? But if the New Testament had intended God to be thought of as The Trinity, would it not have said so, explicitly?

As I read The Gospel According to Mark, Jesus proves his divinity by performing miracles, especially by healing through exorcism, the essence of which is to cast out “unclean spirits” or “demons.” And Jesus is able to do that after he is baptized and possessed by the Holy Spirit.

Thus, the gospel does not introduce the Holy Spirit for the purpose of providing a concept of God, but as a way to explain why Jesus is able to exorcise unclean spirits.

Literary criticism of “the double” sometimes mentions multiple personality. But theological literature on The Trinity does not mention it (1, 2).

1. Roger E. Olson, Christopher A. Hall. The Trinity. Grand Rapids (Michigan), William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2002.
2. Gilles Emery O.P., Matthew Levering (Editors). The Oxford Handbook of The Trinity. Oxford University Press, 2011.
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