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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Saturday, September 5, 2020

“The Mothers” by Brit Bennett (post 6): The Mothers are members of a real life church, Upper Room Chapel, that most book reviews don’t explain

I have just begun Brit Bennett’s first novel, each chapter of which begins with the thoughts of a women’s group of the community’s church, Upper Room Chapel. I didn’t pay attention to this until their discussion at the beginning of Chapter 3, involving “intercessory prayer,” which, I did not know, is one of the four types of prayer recognized in Christianity. My attention was particularly peeked by the sentence, “Then you have to slip into their body.” I don’t know if this means you have to be empathetic or you have to become someone else, which sounds like switching personalities:

“We don’t think of ourselves as ‘prayer warriors.’ A man must have come up with that term. But prayer is more delicate than battle, especially intercessory prayer. More than just a notion, taking up the burdens of someone else, often someone you don’t even know. You close your eyes and listen to a request. Then you have to slip inside their body…If you don’t become them, even for a second, a prayer is nothing but words” (1, p. 38).

Since I am unfamiliar with the Upper Room Chapel church and with prayer in Christian theology, I looked up related links (2-6). Maybe you can understand this aspect of Brit Bennett’s first novel. I don’t see it discussed in book reviews, and I don’t understand why this is in the novel or what it means. Maybe you do.

1. Brit Bennett. The Mothers. New York, Riverhead Books, 2016.
2. Upper Room Chapel https://upperroomchapel.com/
3. The Upper Room https://www.upperroom.org/
4. Prayer Warrior https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prayer_warrior
5. Intercession. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intercession#:~:text=Intercession%20or%20intercessory%20prayer%20is,alongside%20adoration%2C%20confession%20and%20thanksgiving.
6. Prayer in the Catholic Church. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prayer_in_the_Catholic_Church

 September 7, 2020: I didn't note anything related to multiple personality in the rest of the novel.
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