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.

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Friday, April 7, 2023

“The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo” (post 6) by Taylor Jenkins Reid: Why This Novel Has, and Respects, Bisexual, Lesbian, and Gay Characters

In a published interview, Taylor Jenkins Reid, identified as “straight,” reports her having had the following personal experience:


“I was always made fun of for not being feminine enough. I was called a boy, told I had penis envy, called sir, etc. I was told many, many times that I was gay and must be in denial about it. So I tried very hard in my teens and twenties to balance being true to myself with not doing anything that someone might tell me was ‘wrong’ ” (1).


Comment: If this author, like most great fiction writers, has multiple personality trait, her regular personality may be heterosexual, but her alternate personalities may be diverse, and may demand respect.


1. Zachary Zane. "Writing Nuanced Queer Protagonists," in bi.org, October 16, 2017. 

https://bi.org/en/articles/writing-nuanced-queer-protagonists-a-qa-with-taylor-jenkins-reid-writer-of-the-seven-husbands-of-evelyn-hugo

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