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.

— Share site with friends.

Thursday, August 22, 2019


“The Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini (post 3): Importance of protagonist’s symptoms of multiple personality (his voices) is their irrelevance

Why, on two occasions, is the protagonist portrayed as hearing the kind of voices that are typical of multiple personality (see previous posts)? I have finished this novel, and there turns out to be no good reason for his hearing such voices in either plot or character development.

This is what I call “gratuitous multiple personality.” And the reason for it is that it reflects the author’s view of ordinary psychology—or, at least, in this case, his view of the psychology of fiction writers, since the protagonist of this novel is a novelist—based on the author’s own psychology.

My finding gratuitous multiple personality in many novels is part of my evidence that many fiction writers have multiple personality trait.

Another thing I have found in many novels is “unacknowledged multiple personality,” which means that a work of fiction has unlabeled symptoms of multiple personality that are integral to plot or character development and are relevant to understanding what you are reading.

Search “gratuitous multiple personality” and “unacknowledged multiple personality” on this site for previous discussions in regard to many other writers.

Of course, you need the Search Box to do that, and if you don’t see it on your mobile device or smartphone, please visit this site with a larger category of device, whenever available.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Thank you for taking the time to comment (whether you agree or disagree) and ask questions (simple or expert). I appreciate your contribution.