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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Friday, February 8, 2019


Chi and Chinua Achebe: Author of “Things Fall Apart” says belief in duality is part of his Igbo Nigerian culture

“…the word chi in Igbo…is often translated as god, guardian angel, personal spirit, soul, spirit double, etc…In a general way we may visualize a person’s chi as his other identity in spiritland—his spirit being complementing his terrestrial human being; for nothing can stand alone, there must always be another thing standing beside it…

“When we talk about chi, we’re talking about the individual spirit, and so you find the word in all kinds of combinations. Chinwe, which is my wife’s name, means ‘Chi owns me’; mine is Chinua, which is a shortened form of an expression that means ‘May a chi fight for me’…

“One of the most typical Igbo tales is about a proud wrestler who has thrown every challenger in the world, and so he decides to go and wrestle in the land of the spirits…the spirits come out to wrestle with him—one after the other—and he beats them all…The spirits have a consultation and tell him, ‘Well, there is somebody, but we think you shouldn’t fight him.’ He responds, ‘No, if there is anybody at all here now, I must wrestle with him.’ And this person is his chi—his personal spirit—and when he comes out he’s very unimpressive…‘Who is this?’ the wrestler asks. They tell him that this is the man who will challenge him, and he laughs. But his chi moves toward him and with one finger picks him up and smashes him on the ground. And that’s the end of our great wrestler” (1, p. 84).

“The duality. Things come in twos. ‘Wherever something stands, something else will stand beside it’—this is another very powerful Igbo statement. It’s absolutely true, and it’s when someone refuses to see the ‘other’ that you have problems” (1, p. 87).

In Things Fall Apart, “Okonkwo is cut off from reality, and becomes a victim of illusion, of a false perception of himself. Hence his self-governing chi cannot hold him together, he falls apart…” (1, p. 89).

1. Bernth Lindfors (Editor). Conversations with Chinua Achebe. Jackson, University Press of Mississippi, 1997.
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