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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Monday, October 3, 2022

“Olive Kitteridge” (post 1) by Elizabeth Strout: At the end of the novel is a fictitious interview of Elizabeth Strout (ES) and Olive Kitteridge (OK)


The interview, which takes place “in a doughnut shop in Olive’s hometown of Crosby, Maine” (1, p. 276), ends as follows:


ES: But don’t you think there are maybe a lot of suicidal thoughts—or suicide attempts—for a small town like Crosby? Why do you think that is?


OK: You may be the writer, Elizabeth, but I think it’s a wacky question, and I’ll tell you something else—it’s none of your damn business. Good-bye, people. I have a garden to weed (1, p. 282).


Comment: That published interview, intentionally or not, was a virtual announcement by the author that she had multiple personality trait, with her protagonist as her main alternate personality. But most reviewers, probably including those who awarded this novel the Pulitzer Prize, didn’t get it.


1. Elizabeth Strout. Olive Kitteridge. New York, Random House Trade Paperback, 2008.

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