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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Monday, December 10, 2018


“Money” by Martin Amis: Why is protagonist named “John Self”? Why does he have memory gaps (a cardinal symptom of multiple personality)?

“Self” is a synonym for “personality,” as in multiple selves or multiple personalities. Intentionally or inadvertently, the author has named the protagonist his John self or John personality.

John, the first-person narrator, is a movie director, who is in New York to arrange a film. He has been drinking continuously, and mentions on two occasions, in passing, that he has had a “blackout.”

On a third occasion, he is on his way to keep a 9 a.m. breakfast appointment, when he discovers that the time is 9 p.m., and he is twelve hours late.

His reaction to these three episodes is more annoyance than alarm, which implies that memory gaps are nothing new to him. Moreover, since he does not attempt to stop drinking because of these episodes, it is possible that he has had memory gaps even when not intoxicated.

I am only fifty pages into this 363-page novel, and will continue reading.

1. Martin Amis. Money: A Suicide Note [1984]. New York, Penguin Books, 2010.
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