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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Sunday, October 25, 2020

New York Times columnist converses with a Voice in His Head, which would be an Alternate Personality


This politically conservative columnist is a “never trumper,” who would ordinarily vote Republican, but refuses to vote for President Donald Trump. He frames today’s column as an imaginary dialogue between his Never Trump regular self and the Trump-supportive Voice-in-his-head (1).


(He also refers to the voice as his “right-wing id,” but the Freudian “id” is unconscious, primitive, and preverbal. It does not hold conscious, intellectual, dialogues.)


There are other ways that he could have labeled the other side of his dialogue. Why did he choose “a voice in my head”? A person could have a rational dialogue with a voice in his head, but only if it were an alternate personality.


I am not saying that the columnist has a mental disorder. Most people with multiple personality have multiple personality trait, not multiple personality disorder. And it is possible that the columnist has neither, but merely made a mistake in choosing his metaphor.


1. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/24/opinion/sunday/pro-trump-2020-argument.html 

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