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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Friday, July 12, 2019


“Crazy Brave: A Memoir” by Joy Harjo (post 2): In childhood, her protector personality, “the knowing”; as an adult, her “spirit of poetry” personality

People with multiple personality trait have their own unique systems of personalities. And all I know about Joy Harjo’s system is what little she mentions in passing.

One of the most common types of alternate personality is the protector personality. And although some alternate personalities do have names, many others are referred to by a descriptive phrase.

Joy Harjo refers to her protector personality as “the knowing.”

“The Knowing”
“The knowing was a powerful warning system that stepped forth when I was in danger…My knowing said to me in a loud, distinct voice, Do not walk alone with this boy. To do so would put you in danger. I must be imagining things, I said to myself. I walked with him. He knocked me down and attempted to rape me. Someone came on us and I leaped up and got away.

“The knowing was always right. It could never be disarmed. It stood watch over me.

“Still, I tried. I told the knowing to remember that my stepfather could be nice sometimes. He sang show tunes to my mother. The knowing didn’t respond. Truth does not lower itself to small-time arguments or skirmishes” (1, p. 74).

“The Spirit of Poetry”
As Joy Harjo became older, her protector personality, “the knowing,” may have evolved into the alternate personality she called “the spirit of poetry”:

“It was the spirit of poetry who reached out and found me as I stood there at the doorway between panic and love…

“…the spirit of poetry came to me.

“To imagine the spirit of poetry is much like imagining the shape and size of the knowing. It is a kind of resurrection light; it is the tall ancestor spirit who has been with me since the beginning…

“ ‘You’re coming with me, poor thing. You don’t know how to listen. You don’t know how to speak. You don’t know how to sing. I will teach you.’

“I followed poetry” (1, p. 163-164).

1. Joy Harjo. Crazy Brave: A Memoir. New York, W. W. Norton, 2012.

 Added July 13: On rereading the above, I see that she may not have been equating "the knowing" and "the spirit of poetry," except in that she could visualize each of them. I'm not sure.
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