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.

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Thursday, March 14, 2019


“Rabbit, Run” by John Updike (post 4): Part II on his protagonist’s name, Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom

Updike was happy with his height (6’3”), but he was unhappy with his mouth and nose. His mouth stuttered and his nose was too big.

In the first paragraph of the novel, “Rabbit Angstrom” is described as “six three,” with “a nervous flutter under his brief nose.” His nose is later described as “a neat smooth button” (1, p. 139).

Updike’s stuttering has been reduced to a “flutter.” His big nose has been reduced to a “button.”

The first paragraph adds that his nickname was given to him when he was a boy.

So I infer that Updike, as a boy, wished for his stuttering to be eliminated and his nose to be reduced in size. His alternate personality, Rabbit, resulted.

1. John Updike. Rabbit, Run. New York, Fawcett Books, 1960.
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