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, February 25, 2022

Ian McEwan (post 7): “Saturday” begins with protagonist’s auditory hallucinations and small memory gaps, suggestive of multiple personality


The first six posts on this writer (search “Ian McEwan”) were mostly on his novel Enduring Love.  In Saturday, the neurosurgeon protagonist has this:


“Patients would be less happy to know that he’s not always listening to them.  He’s a dreamer sometimes.  Like a car-radio traffic alert, a shadowy mental narrative can break in, urgent and unbidden, even during a consultation.  He’s adept at covering his tracks, continuing to nod or frown or firmly close his mouth around a half-smile.  When he comes to, seconds later, he never seems to have missed much” (1, pp. 19-20).


Unless you ask people about such experiences, they will not report them, because it has been routine and has not caused them problems.  Since the author is probably not intending to portray the protagonist as having multiple personality, the above probably reflects the author’s own psychology.


1. Ian McEwan. Saturday. USA, Doubleday/Random House, 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)