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.

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Friday, January 10, 2020


True vs. Useful: The literary and psychological theory presented here has proved true, but is it useful?

A theory is proved when it predicts the unexpected and its predictions turn out to be true.

My theory, from a literary perspective, is called Multiple Identity Literary Theory. From a psychological perspective, it is called Multiple Personality Trait.

It predicts that works by great fiction writers would be found to contain unlabeled symptoms of multiple personality. And that is what I’ve found in works of literally hundreds of writers.

But just because a theory is true does not mean it is useful. I do not know that readers of fiction would get more enjoyment if they knew about it; nor that literary professors would care to include it in what they teach; nor that psychologists would wish to study it; nor that writing programs would consider it; nor that fiction writers would even want to think about it.

I hope that visitors to this site will help address these issues.

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