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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Monday, May 3, 2021

“Blaze” (post 5), “Carrie,” “The Dark Half” by Stephen King (post 20): All three protagonists have bad alternate personalities, but only the novelist wins


Blaze is killed by police who come to rescue the baby that Blaze kidnapped at the urging of his evil alternate personality (1).


Carrie dies in the context of the widespread destruction caused by her telekinesic alternate personality (2).


But Thad triumphs over his evil alternate personality. Why? Thad is a novelist (3), for whom multiple personality is an asset. And he probably knew Stephen King.


1. Stephen King (writing as Richard Bachman). Blaze [1973/2007]. New York, Gallery Books, 2018.

2. Stephen King. Carrie [1974]. New York, Anchor Books, 2011.

3. Stephen King. The Dark Half [1989]. New York, Gallery Books, 2018.

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