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.

Wednesday, September 11, 2019


Partial Apology for Declaring Books Unreadable When They Have Excessive Manifestations of Multiple Personality

On rare occasions in the past six years, I have declined to continue reading books that I found unclear and unreadable. But how could I have been right to put these books down, since I wouldn’t have picked them up in the first place if they had not been either classics or by proven writers?

I may find books unreadable due to the following:
1. unexplained switching among multiple narrators
2. unexplained switching back and forth in time
3. unexplained switching among casts of characters
4. unexplained switching from one story to another
5. puzzling format

Since I read things here in order to find manifestations of multiple personality, it is ironic that I find works unreadable when they have excessive manifestations of multiple personality, such as the five kinds listed above.

Of course, what is “excessive” for me may be delightful to others, who include many readers, reviewers, and literary prize judges.
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