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, March 4, 2023

Crazy Joke may suggest author's multiple personality in “The Shipping News” (post 3) by E. Annie Proulx (first edition) or Annie Proulx (later editions)


As a psychiatrist who occasionally diagnosed and treated multiple personality, one thing that made me consider the possibility of multiple personality was the presence of seemingly psychotic symptoms in a person whose level of function was obviously not psychotic. Kluft's formal study is analogous (1).


In The Shipping News, Mr. Melville, a minor character, is found beheaded and dismembered (2, p. 217), evidently after a conflict with his wife about redecorating their yacht. When I first read this, I took it as a joke, or, at least, an example of the absurdity of life, which are ways the reader is meant to take it.


After reflection, however, I consider it a warped and crazy joke. But the author, I presume, is not crazy.


Therefore, in addition to the author’s variable naming of herself, I interpret her joke about beheading and dismemberment to be a possible indication of multiple personality (the creative trait, not the clinical disorder).


1. Kluft, R. P. (1987). First-rank [psychotic] symptoms as a diagnostic clue to multiple personality disorder. The American Journal of Psychiatry, 144(3), 293–298.

2. Annie Proulx. The Shipping News [1993]. New York, Scribner, 2003. 

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)