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.

— Share site with friends.

Saturday, November 26, 2022

“The Sea” by John Banville: Novel ends without solving protagonist’s problem, that he never had a singular self in the way that others have

“From earliest days I wanted to be someone else…It was not what I was that I disliked…the notion of an essential singular self is problematic…I never had a personality, not in the way that others have. I was always a distinct no-one, whose fiercest wish was to be an indistinct someone. I know what I mean. Anna [his wife]…would be the medium of my transmutation. She was the fairground mirror in which all my distortions would be made straight” (1, p. 160).


1. John Banville. The Sea. New York, Vintage International, 2005.


Added Nov. 27 (12:25 p.m.):What is your opinion? If book reviewers and Booker Prize judges had not noted the significance of the above—and of the other things I’ve noted in previous posts on this novel and its artistic author, John Banville—had they appreciated what they were reading? Or, in your opinion, are the points I’ve made beside the point?

Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Thank you for taking the time to comment (whether you agree or disagree) and ask questions (simple or expert). I appreciate your contribution.

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)