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, April 10, 2023

“Deal Breaker” (post 1) by Harlan Coben: Character’s dialogue with italicized voice in her head, a gratuitous symptom of multiple personality

Jessica has circled the house of her friend, Nancy, who had seemed to be home, but has not answered the door. “She [Jessica] pounded on the door with both fists.”


“Nancy! Nancy!”


“She [Jessica] heard the panic in her voice and scolded herself for it. 


Get a grip. You’re spooking yourself…


“…This time the door was not locked. The knob turned easily.”


“Don’t just go in, dodo! Call the cops!


“And say what? I knocked on the door and no one answered? That I then started peeking through windows and saw someone moving around?


“That doesn’t sound so bad.”


“She pushed the voice away. Then she opened the door…” (1, p. 203).


Comment: Italicized voices of an alternate personality in a character’s head, as discussed in past posts, are unintentional, gratuitous symptoms of multiple personality, which are in the novel only because the novelist considers it ordinary psychology, since the novelist, himself, has probably had that kind of experience as a symptom of his own multiple personality trait. 


1. Harlan Coben. Deal Breaker. New York, Dell, 1995/2019.

2. Wikipedia. “Harlan Coben.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlan_Coben

3. Wikipedia. “Deal Breaker.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deal_Breaker

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