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.

— Share site with friends.

Wednesday, November 11, 2020

Sir Walter Scott: Ivanhoe, Incognito, Anonymity, Amnesia, typical features of multiple personality; and trivia re Rebecca and Jews in Ivanhoe

I have just read Ivanhoe (1). Several of the characters are incognito, which is the usual status of alternate personalities in multiple personality, prior to diagnosis.


Sir Walter Scott had a history of maintaining anonymity when his novels were published. He gave various reasons, but eventually confessed that he did not fully understand his motive (2).


One possible reason for authors to use a pseudonym or remain anonymous is their having partial or total amnesia for how their books are written. For example, after completing The Bride of Lammermoor (1819), Scott couldn’t even remember the plot, according to Lockhart’s Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott (1837). Amnesia, a memory gap, is a cardinal symptom of multiple personality.


Trivia re Rebecca and Jews in Ivanhoe:

https://ajhs.org/blog/american-jewish-history-and%E2%80%A6ivanhoe http://www.victorianweb.org/previctorian/scott/gossman.html


1. Sir Walter Scott. Ivanhoe [1820]. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1996.

2. Cooney, Seamus (1972) “Scott’s Anonymity — Its Motives and Consequences,” Studies in Scottish Literature: Vol. 10: Iss. 4, 207-219. https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1992&context=ssl

Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Thank you for taking the time to comment (whether you agree or disagree) and ask questions (simple or expert). I appreciate your contribution.

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)