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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Friday, November 23, 2018


“Plain Truth” by Jodi Picoult (post 3): In lie detector test, Katie denies ever being pregnant or killing her baby. Why does she pass, then fail, the test?

Katie is administered a lie detector test. She denies ever being pregnant, ever having a baby, and killing her baby. She easily passes the test, which means she honestly believes that none of these things ever happened.

Minutes later, as is routine, the test is redone, and Katie gives the same answers to the same questions, but this time the test strongly indicates that she does not believe those answers (1, p. 154).

Ellie, Katie’s lawyer, has been present during both tests. Immediately afterward:

“Bright-eyed and blissfully unaware, Katie looked up at me. ‘Are we finished?’ ‘Yes,’ I said softly. ‘We certainly are’ ” (1, p. 155).

Ellie’s thoughts about the puzzling discrepancy are not given at this point, and I won’t try to read Ellie’s mind.

But you can probably read my mind.

If you can’t, search “puzzling inconsistencies” and “puzzling inconsistency” in this blog.

1. Jodi Picoult. Plain Truth. New York, Washington Square Press, 2000.
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