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 10, 2021

“The Good Earth” (post 3) by Pearl S. Buck (post 4): Novel's conclusion highlights idea that being born female may entail childhood trauma


In this novel of 1920s China, newborn children are casually referred to, not as boys or girls, but as sons or slaves. And if families ever feel desperate, they may literally sell a daughter.


At the end of the novel, protagonist Wang Lung is an elderly widower, who most enjoys the quiet company of his mentally retarded daughter, “poor fool,” and his attractive young slave, Pear Blossom:


“Then Wang Lung withdrew more and more into his age and lived much alone except for these two…his poor fool and Pear Blossom…

     “It is too quiet a life for you [Pear Blossom]…

     “It is quiet and safe…[she replies]

     “I am too old for you…

     “You are kind to me and more I do not desire of any man…

     “What was it in your tender years that made you thus fearful of men.” “And looking at her for answer he saw a great terror in her eyes…

     “Every man I hate except you—I have hated every man, even my father who sold me…I am filled with loathing and I hate them all. I hate all young men…

     “But he sighed and gave over his questions, because above everything now he would have peace, and he wished only to sit…near these two” (1, pp. 350-351).


As discussed in the two previous posts, the only character I have noted to have symptoms of multiple personality is Wang Lung, the male protagonist, probably because he is the only character with much of any description of his mind. However, his childhood is not sufficiently described.


I mention the above about Pear Blossom, because it is highlighted at the end of the novel, and may suggest the author’s view that female childhood is traumatic, which may reflect her view of her own childhood.


And childhood trauma is a precondition for multiple personality.


1. Pearl S. Buck. The Good Earth [1931]. New York, Washington Square Press/ATRIA, 2020. 

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