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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Thursday, September 30, 2021

Sally Rooney on her characters (post 2): Her regular personality has no memory for creating them, but knows, rationally, that she must have created them


In my recent post, I cited a video interview (1) and commented: She says that the characters just walked into her brain fully formed. She does not know where they came from. But since they could not have been created by anyone but her, they must have been created by a part of her mind of which she is not aware: a conscious, creative, story-telling, alternate personality. However, neither the author nor the interviewer reason this out.


In another interview, Rooney says this: “I suppose when I first met these characters, I felt like, they were already fully formed and it was my job to find out what was going on with them. Of course, that’s not actually true, and sometimes I have to remind myself, 'You made it up! They did not arrive fully formed. You made it all up!' But I can’t accept that" (2).


Comment

Her subjective experience is that she did not create the characters (because she has no memory of doing so). But she knows, rationally, that she must have created them. The solution to this mystery is that her regular personality has a memory gap for what an alternate personality did.


1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIGSMGdgCyQ

2. https://hazlitt.net/feature/im-not-so-interested-feelings-people-go-through-their-own-interview-sally-rooney

3. Wikipedia. Sally Rooney. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_Rooney

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