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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Saturday, June 11, 2022

“James Patterson by James Patterson” (post 4): He says he has “schizophrenia,” meaning multiple personality


“The other day I was catching a quick lunch at the Surf Side Diner in town. Actually, the Surf Side isn’t that close to the surf. Anyway, I’m alone. Making some notes for a novel I’m doing called Lion & Lamb. I’m having a fine time. Doing what I love.

A man I’ve never seen before comes up and stands over my table.

He finally says, “No friends?”

I look up from my writing. I smile. “Oh, when you’re schizophrenic like me, you’re never completely alone”” (1, p. 338).


Question: How many ways must Patterson, and the other great fiction writers discussed in this blog, say they have multiple personality before you believe them?


1. James Patterson. James Patterson by James Patterson: The Stories of my Life. New York, Little, Brown and Company, 2022.

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