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.

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Wednesday, July 29, 2020

“Mary Poppins Comes Back” by P. L. Travers (post 4): In first two chapters, Mary Poppins has two symptoms of multiple personality, Illeism and memory gaps

“…she looked at herself in the window…and she thought…she had never seen Mary Poppins look nicer…” (1, p. 32). This is Illeism (third-person self reference). In multiple personality, it happens when one personality refers to another personality as though they were two different persons. Search “Illeism” for past posts related to other writers.

In the first chapter, “The Kite,” Mary Poppins comes back, literally appearing from behind a cloud in the sky, attached to the string of a kite. However, when the children later ask her about this, she denies it happened, which is a cardinal symptom of multiple personality: a memory gap. Search “memory gaps.”

In the second chapter, there is a visit from the father’s former governess, Miss Andrew. Insulted, Mary Poppins forcefully sends Miss Andrew packing, but when confronted with that fact, which was witnessed, Mary Poppins has no memory of having done it.

In the first book, and continuing in this second book, Mary Poppins is portrayed as a person who usually refuses to explain herself. The reason for this has now become clear. It is not just arrogance, but a typical defense learned by persons with memory gaps, who often can’t explain themselves, because they don’t remember everything they say or do.

1. P. L. Travers. Mary Poppins Comes Back [1935]. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1997.
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