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, March 6, 2020

“Beloved” by Toni Morrison (post 17): Beloved is Denver’s imaginary playmate and Sethe’s alternate personality; “rememory” is slang

Imaginary Playmate
In the chapter that begins “Beloved is My Sister” (1, p. 237), Denver says, “…I shouldn’t be afraid of the ghost…it would never hurt me. I just had to watch out for it because it was a greedy ghost and needed a lot of love…And I do. Love her. I do. She played with me and always came to be with me whenever I needed her” (1, p. 242).

Alternate Personality
In the next two chapters, which both begin, “I am Beloved and she is mine,” Beloved says, “Sethe’s is the face that left me…it is the face I lost…she is my face smiling at me…now we can join” (1, p. 247).

“She smiles at me and it is my own face smiling” (1, p. 248)…“you are me” (1, p. 250).

 Added March 7: Relatives can have similar faces. Identical twins can have identical faces. But the only way that two "persons" can have the same face is if they are alternate personalities of the same person.

Rememory
“You rememory me?
“Yes, I remember you” (1, p. 249).

1. Toni Morrison. Beloved [1987]. New York, Everyman’s/Knopf, 2006.
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