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, September 8, 2018


“The Lotus and the Storm” by Lan Cao (post 4): Vietnam 1975, Mai, 17, says “I am slowly learning how to carry on calmly, projecting a singular, unified self”

“The sight of her, a big scowling shadow like a darkened, angry girl crouched in a corner…There she sits, this nameless she…These meetings once wiped me out but seemed to give her renewed power. They used to be occasions in which she vanquished me and took over. I would be obliterated and sent into lost time. Her appearance was violent…Now it is more straightforward…an icier, stealthy disturbance…Somehow we have managed to accommodate each other. I still dread her appearance, but it no longer carries with it the threat of total destruction…

“I am slowly learning how to carry on calmly, projecting a singular, unified self…I have come to expect them both. There are two…Both are a cross-stitch of personalities…waiting to be released from sorrow and pain…

“I hear a shuffling sound. A little girl, smaller than I, emerges from a mysterious place…Her face is sweet and soft, framed by fine black hair that curls like mine used to when I was little. The girl reaches over and gives our mother a squeeze on her arm. Mother neither responds nor pulls away. She looks indifferently at the little girl. Cecile, I think…Playmate to the mynah bird. Still miraculously a little child somehow immune to the passage of chronological time. When Cecile emerges, I am edged out, lost inside time, but not completely. I am both in and out of consciousness…” (1, pp. 214-215).

1. Lan Cao. The Lotus and the Storm. New York, Viking, 2014.
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)