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.

Friday, May 28, 2021

“Tell Me Your Dreams” by Sidney Sheldon (post 3): Ashley/Toni/Alette has multiple personality disorder, but why does her lawyer have a symptom?


This novel is the story of a woman with multiple personality disorder. The author researched multiple personality to give her realistic symptoms. The novel has an appendix with textbooks about multiple personality and places to get treatment. So I have nothing to say about this character’s symptoms of multiple personality. She is supposed to have them.


However, at a point in Ashley’s trial when it looks like she will lose—she is accused of murder, and her lawyer has argued that the murder was committed by an alternate personality, which is true—her lawyer has the following subjective experience:


“And a small, nagging voice in his mind said, Who says it’s over? I don’t hear the fat lady singing.

“There is nothing more I can do.

“Your client is innocent. Are you going to let her die?

“Leave me alone” (1, p. 272).


Why does the lawyer converse with his own alternate personality? Probably because the author had this kind of experience, and thought of it as ordinary psychology. But it is ordinary psychology only for persons with multiple personality, and the author probably had multiple personality trait (a normal version of multiple personality disorder).


1. Sidney Sheldon. Tell Me Your Dreams [1998]. New York, Grand Central Publishing, 2005.

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)