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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Wednesday, April 26, 2023

“One for the Money” by Janet Evanovich: Why does protagonist, Stephanie Plum, have gratuitous, unintentional symptoms of multiple personality?

Memory Gap

“I heard the sirens wailing from far away, getting closer and closer, and the the police were pounding on my door. I don’t remember letting them in, but obviously I did. A uniformed cop took me aside, into the kitchen, and sat me down on a chair. A medic followed…” (1, p. 203).


Comment: Memory gaps are a cardinal symptom of multiple personality, because the regular personality may not remember what an alternate personality did.


Voices

“A little voice in my head whispered to get out of the apartment. Use the fire escape, it said. Move fast” (1, p. 294).


“…and the message came back to me…Do something! (1, p. 300).


Comment: Persons with multiple personality may hear voices of their alternate personalities in their head, sometimes italicized.


Concluding Comment: Since the author did not intend to make multiple personality an issue in plot or character development, the presence of its symptoms in her protagonist is what I call “gratuitous multiple personality,” which is probably in the novel only as a reflection of the author’s multiple personality trait.


1. Janet Evanovich. One for the Money. New York, Pocket Books, 1994/2018.

2. Wikipedia. “Janet Evanovich.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_Evanovich

3. Wikipedia. “Stephanie Plum.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephanie_Plum

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