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.

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Tuesday, May 25, 2021

“The World According to Garp” by John Irving (post 2): The climax of the novel revolves around a symptom of multiple personality, self-mutilation


Garp, 33, a married father, having successfully published his third novel, is assassinated, shot to death at close range (1, pp. 495-497), by a woman who is a member of a fringe feminist organization that Garp had criticized for their practice of self-mutilation.


These women literally cut out their own tongues in sympathy for a young woman whose tongue had been cut out by a man who raped her, even though the young woman, herself, has published a statement condemning self-mutilation.


I previously discussed self-mutilation as a symptom of multiple personality in posts on novels by Gillian Flynn. Please search “Gillian Flynn” to read about this issue.


There is no indication as to why John Irving made his climax for The World According to Garp revolve around this symptom of multiple personality. Multiple personality is not necessary to the plot or character development, and the gratuitous presence of one of its symptoms may be an inadvertent reflection of the author’s psychology.


1. John Irving. The World According to Garp [1978]. 40th Anniversary Edition. New York, Dutton, 2018. 

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