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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Sunday, July 26, 2020

“Donald Trump Is the Best Ever President in the History of the Cosmos!” by Frank Bruni in today’s New York Times: “His strategy is fiction. His strategy is lies.”

My past posts on President Trump were prompted by his history of using pseudonymshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudonyms_of_Donald_Trump. Pseudonyms are a recurrent topic in my discussion of the multiple personality trait of fiction writers, because, in multiple personality, the names of alternate personalities are pseudonyms. Search “pseudonyms.”

Another recurrent topic in my discussion of multiple personality in fiction writers is lying, because some people with multiple personality have a history, even since childhood (when multiple personality starts) of being considered liars. Search “lying” to see past posts on fiction writers, multiple personality, and lying.

I liked today’s essay by New York Times columnist, Frank Bruni, because he combines the two issues of fiction and lying: “His strategy is fiction. His strategy is lies.” https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/25/opinion/sunday/trump-lies.html.

It is an old joke among fiction writers that they are professional liars. However, for the president of the United States to be a professional liar is no joke. But what is it?

Other than pseudonyms, lying, unpredictability, and self-contradiction, there is Trump’s alternating personal appearance. One day he is gray; the next day he is blond; the next day he is gray; the next day he is blond. You don’t see something like that with most men. Is he bisexual, transgender, or multiple personality? Is it a conscious manipulation of his image for political purposes? Or a quirk of his hair stylist?

Since not all professional liars, people who use pseudonyms, or people who alter their appearance have multiple personality, I am still undecided about Trump, but multiple personality should be in the differential diagnosis (the list of diagnoses under consideration).

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