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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Monday, December 28, 2020

“The Pessoa Syndrome” (2013) by Katia Mitova


This is a link to a complete article by Professor Mitova, for whom I gave a link to only an abstract back in 2016 (see below). In the abstract below, her “multiple personality order” (not disorder) is similar to my “multiple personality trait” (not disorder), which I previously called "normal multiple personality."


Added Dec. 29: I have never met Mitova, but she is both a scholar and a poet. Her scholarship is evident. Her being a poet means that her approach to this subject may reflect inside knowledge. So I recommend the following single link:


https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/36819001/Mitova_Pessoa_Syndrome_2013.pdf?1425253218=&response-content-disposition=inline%3B+filename%3DThe_Pessoa_Syndrome.pdf&Expires=1611882698&Signature=bEt0K~VcYDMxR3oHCmP-M~Fj5z8DTS0aDesDiv4sAAtydu0QXo9yWb7L4GQZuY-3RqLmv7TgVWVcOF57VT05sDjrSy1akOu7B6~9wcFq03EyX24lZ5O9S6M~PkyC78voivftzCFrgR4Vc1InT-tAlZKhDlvGK9eJ55xbyYFGxbgpNP1lB3R8rAtJ2QX9l2iSWlCqcuizquJ73glakX80aPh6ht1yBWtvEBQLRw31J7AnIRaQD9ipx1E4~AedIxNhUr0jyrKESwvJWz0c2IU3JgwViLzxF30aQMpz81Zolx4KBQz8O888Bc8bs3uFNMNCr7qVGKyjSibxhqI61YyYyg__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJLOHF5GGSLRBV4ZA


Note: The above link may periodically expire. You may find a currently active link by searching the essay on Google Scholar.


August 13, 2016

Professors of Literature who understand importance of Multiple Personality in Literary Criticism: Jeremy Hawthorn, Katia Mitova, Heike Schwarz.


We may not agree on everything, but I honor and commend their psychiatric literacy, and hope that other scholars follow their example.


Jeremy Hawthorn. Multiple Personality and the Disintegration of Literary Character: From Oliver Goldsmith to Sylvia Plath. New York, St. Martin’s Press, 1983.


Katia Mitova. “Artistic Creativity as a ‘Multiple Personality Order’: The Case of Fernando Pessoa.” https://brill.com/view/book/edcoll/9781848882034/BP000016.xml


Heike Schwarz. Beware of the Other Side(s): Multiple Personality Disorder and Dissociative Identity Disorder in American Fiction. Transcript-Verlag, 2013. 

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