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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Sunday, June 18, 2023

“Identity” (post 1) by Nora Roberts: As she drives to her job interview at a Vermont hotel, a quoted third-person voice criticizes her thoughts


“She spotted the first cabins tucked in those snowy woods and admitted she’d never understand the appeal of a winter vacation that involved winter.

A tropical beach, now, a sun-washed Italian villa, those made absolute sense. But a cabin in the Vermont woods, paying to freeze on a ski lift or skate on a frozen lake?

Forget it. 

“And you can keep those opinions to yourself if you hope to land this job.”

She followed the signs to the hotel [where she was going for a job interview], winding her way” (1, pp. 90-91).


Comment: The quoted voice of an alternate personality disapproves of her regular personality’s thoughts (if she wants to get the job she is seeking). 


But since the character had not been labeled as having multiple personality, the multiple personality scenario—a voice of an alternate personality criticizing a person’s regular thoughts—is probably an inadvertent reflection of the author’s multiple personality trait.


1. Nora Roberts. Identity (a novel). New York, St. Martin’s Press, 2023. 


Added June 18: You might presume that the author could have made the character think, "Of course, I will keep my opinions to myself if I want to land this job." But many novelists experience their characters and personalities as having minds of their own. So an alternate personality intervened.

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