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.

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Saturday, March 13, 2021

“The Portrait of a Lady” (post 6) by Henry James: Is the protagonist irrational and the narrator a liar?


A new character, Madame Merle, is said by the narrator to have a rare attribute and a good purpose: “She knew how to think—an accomplishment rare in women; and she had thought to very good purpose” (1, p. 195).


Since the narrator has not said that the protagonist, Isabel Archer, is also a rare woman who knew how to think, it is possible that Isabel is irrational.


And if Madame Merle turns out to be a villain, then the narrator’s description of her as having a good purpose will have been a lie.


Will my discussion of the novel be affected if, in the novelist’s conception, the protagonist is irrational and the narrator is a liar?


The novelist’s conception may not matter, because symptoms of multiple personality in novels are usually not the novelist’s intention.


1. Henry James. The Portrait of a Lady [1881/1908]. Editing, Introduction, Notes by Roger Luckhurst. New York, Oxford University Press, 2009.

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