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, August 16, 2019


F. Scott Fitzgerald on Self-Contradiction: Stupidity vs. Wisdom vs. Multiple Personality

“It’s No Felony to Violate the Law of Contradiction” says an essay in today’s Wall Street Journal. https://www.wsj.com/articles/its-no-felony-to-violate-the-law-of-contradiction-11565910307

The essay begins with a famous quotation from F. Scott Fitzgerald:

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” —from The Crack-up [1936]

But F. Scott Fitzgerald, like most fiction writers, may have had multiple personality trait, as another of his quotes suggests:

“Writers aren’t people exactly. Or, if they’re any good, they’re a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person.” —from The Love of The Last Tycoon: A Western [1941]

In short, there are different kinds and degrees of contradictory attitudes, ranging from stupidity to wisdom to the puzzling inconsistency of alternate personalities (puzzling when you don’t know that the person has multiple personality).
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