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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Wednesday, June 9, 2021

“The Mysterious Affair at Styles” by Agatha Christie (post 11): Evelyn Howard has dual nature, changes personality, assumes other identities


This is Agatha Christie’s first novel (1), published six years before her famous disappearance, discussed previously. It is a murder mystery that has nothing to do with multiple personality. The following passages were not intended to suggest multiple personality, as far as I know.


“Miss Howard shook hands with a hearty, almost painful, grip…She was a pleasant-looking woman of about forty, with a deep voice, almost manly in its stentorian tones, and had a large sensible square body, with feet to match…” (2, p. 7).


After Hercule Poirot says that Miss Howard may have another side:

“Suddenly she took her face from her hands.

“Yes,” she said quietly, “that was not Evelyn Howard who spoke!” She flung her head up proudly. “This is Evelyn Howard!” (2, p. 131).


“Miss Howard, disguised as Alfred Inglethorp, enters the chemist’s shop…obtains the strychnine, and writes the name of Alfred Inglethorp in John’s handwriting, which she had previously studied carefully” (2, p. 202).


Comment

In a murder mystery that is not supposed to have anything to do with multiple personality, why is a key character written in a way that inadvertently suggests multiple personality? It reflects the author’s psychology.


1. Wikipedia. The Mysterious Affair at Styles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mysterious_Affair_at_Styles

2. Agatha Christie. The Mysterious Affair at Styles [1920]. New York, Vintage Books, 2019. 

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