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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Monday, March 28, 2022

“It Ends with Us” (post 4) by Colleen Hoover (post 7): Author misunderstands her novel and possibly herself


“He knows what he’s done.  He’s [the nice] Ryle again” (1, p. 266).


Lily, the protagonist, recognizes that there are two Ryles, one that is angry and assaults her, and the other, a nice Ryle, whom she loves. But the author has forgotten that the angry Ryle blacks out (post 3), leaving the nice Ryle with a memory gap. That is, the nice Ryle knows what he’s done only indirectly, through circumstantial evidence (Lily’s injuries, etc.).


Thus, the author does not recognize that she has written a multiple personality scenario, with two Ryle personalities.


Search “unacknowledged multiple personality,” which is a multiple personality scenario that is unlabeled, and is probably a reflection of the author’s own psychology (search “multiple personality trait”).


1. Colleen Hoover. It Ends with Us. New York, Atria, 2016.

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