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, October 14, 2018

New York Times Book Review: Sally Field’s memoir, “In Pieces,” reveals that due to childhood trauma she has “distinct and sometimes conflicting identities”

The New York Times review of In Pieces, the bestselling memoir by multiple Emmy- and Oscar-winning actress, Sally Field, says this:

“The events [sexual abuse] of Field’s childhood seemed to fragment her personality into distinct and sometimes conflicting identities—the ‘pieces’ of the book’s title—and shaped how she navigated both her romantic relationships and her career, as she rose from teenage star…to her Emmy-winning role as a woman with multiple personality disorder in ‘Sybil’…” (1).

The title and content of this memoir would seem to imply that one reason Sally Field is such a good actress, and was so good in Sybil, is that she, herself, has a creative, high-functioning version of multiple personality. However, The New York Times Book Review does not recognize the relationship between multiple personality and creativity.

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