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, April 6, 2022

“Will” a memoir by actor Will Smith (post 2): Method acting gets out of control, probably due to multiple personality trait


Will Smith was to play the part of Paul in the movie Six Degrees of Separation…“This character was so drastically different from who I was” that “During the months of my preparation, I would spend four or five days at a stretch without breaking character. Not once, not one moment…


“It was fun…at first. But then slowly, and imperceptibly, I lost touch with my own likes and dislikes, I lost access to the intonation and rhythm of my own speech — I lost touch with Will Smith. Sheree [his wife] started to say things like, ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ and ‘Stop talking like that.’…Sheree was suddenly living with a stranger…


“I had lost touch with Fresh Prince [his character in his TV series based on his Grammy award-winning fame as a hip-hop recording star]…I had lost my sense of humor, my timing, my swag, my charisma…Cast and crew alike were terrified…So I hired five or six of my friends from Philly [his home city of Philadelphia] to surround me…It worked by around mid-season” (1, pp. 225-228).


1. Will Smith. Will a memoir by the actor, written with Mark Manson. New York, Penguin Press, 2021.

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