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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Saturday, April 22, 2023

“Wifey” (post 2) by Judy Blume: Italics used for Ego-syntonic Fantasies and Thoughts vs. Ego-alien Voices


Sandy, the protagonist, for nearly two whole pages, which are rendered mostly in italics, appears to meet and have a sexual encounter with the plumbing contractor for her new house (1, pp. 172-173).


Then, suddenly, the italics disappear, and she has an ordinary discussion with the real plumbing contractor for about a half page (1, p. 174), proving the previous encounter to have been an ego-syntonic fantasy.


Comment: Most authors appear to conceive of italics—apart from their mundane use for emphasis—as a way to indicate that something is going on in the character’s mind, whether the thoughts are realistic or fantasy, ego-syntonic (which feel to characters like their own thoughts or fantasies) or ego-dystonic, ego-alien, voices of alternate personalities. The latter distinction re voices is a contribution of this blog.


1. Judy Blume. Wifey. New York, Berkley Books, 1978/2005. 

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