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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Friday, November 20, 2020

Alexandre Dumas’ “The Count of Monte Cristo” (post 3): Faria influences Dantès, whose face shows multiple frames of mind, simultaneously


There are no Svengali moments between Edmond Dantès and fellow prisoner, Abbé Faria, the character named after a real-life hypnotist. But Faria tells Dantès that he has had a profound influence on him: “I have insinuated a feeling into your heart that was not previously there: the desire for revenge” (1, p. 168).


Subsequently, when Dantès has escaped from prison, become rich, and is seeking revenge, he is depicted as having multiple frames of mind, simultaneously (common in multiple personality):


“Only the count appeared impassive. More than that: a faint blush of red seemed to be appearing beneath the livid pallor of his cheeks. His nose was dilating like that of a wild beast at the smell of blood, and his lips, slightly parted, showed his white teeth, as small and sharp as a jackal’s. Yet, despite that, his face had an expression of smiling tenderness…his black eyes, above all, were compellingly soft and lenient” (1, p. 392).


1. Alexandre Dumas. The Count of Monte Cristo [1845]. Translated by Robin Buss. London, Penguin Books, 1996. 

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