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.

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Saturday, July 16, 2022

Two Types of Inner Voices: “Intrapersonal” vs. “Communication with Alternate Personalities”

“Intrapersonal communication is the process by which an individual communicates within themselves by…acting as both sender and receiver of messages…to consciously engage in self-talk and inner speech…Intrapersonal communication is a person's inner voice…

…Intrapersonal communication also facilitates the process by which an individual engages in unspoken internal dialogue between different and sometimes conflicting attitudes, thoughts, and feelings…An inner discourse takes place much as would a discussion with a second person…” (1).

Forms of Communication with the Alternate Personalities

“…Another form of contact is through inner vocalizations. The patient may ‘hear’ the alternate personality speak as an inner voice within, often as one of the ‘voices’ that the patient has been hearing for years” (2, p. 94).

Comment: An inner voice may be the voice of an alternate personality if it seems to have a mind of its own.

1. Wikipedia. “Intrapersonal Communication.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrapersonal_communication

2. Frank W. Putnam, M.D. Diagnosis and Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder. New York, The Guilford Press, 1989.

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