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.

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Monday, April 17, 2023

“Dear Edward” (post 1) by Ann Napolitano: Italics and voices in the head

I am so impressed by the clarity of language at the beginning of this novel that I am stopped by a peculiar sentence:


“So much could be solved, she thinks, if we simply held hands with each other” (1, p. 5).


Why have both italics and “she thinks” in the same sentence?


In past posts on other writers’ work, I have made the point that when italics are used instead of saying someone thinks, it is often because it is a voice (from an alternate personality) in the person’s head and not just a thought. So what is going on here?


Perhaps the author is using italics to highlight tear-jerker sentiments in this possibly tear-jerker novel. Or, did the author hear the voice of an alternate personality whose contribution to this novel was to whisper such sentiments to the author while she was writing?


Added Apr. 17"A new voice entered his head..." (1, p.19).

Most people do not hear voices in their head—which are probably alternate personalities—but the author's casual reference to it suggests that she does have that kind of experience, which is the significant point here, not her use of italics.


1. Ann Napolitano. Dear Edward. New York, Dial Press, 2020/2021.

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