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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Monday, June 19, 2023

“Identity” (post 3) by Nora Roberts: Protagonist hears voices, again, which may explain Shakespeare's belief in ghosts


“Her trip to the garden center flooded her with bittersweet memories of Nina. But having her [deceased] friend’s voice whispering in her ear as she wandered, as she chose plants brought comfort” (1, p. 174).


Comment: Coming after the voice heard by the protagonist in post 1, readers should understand this author’s attitude toward hearing voices: that it is ordinary, normal psychology, which many people, probably including the author, experience in their everyday life.


The reason that voices are surprisingly common in mentally well persons is that they are probably the voices of alternate personalities in people with multiple personality trait, which I estimate to be present in thirty percent of the general population and ninety percent of novelists. 


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


Added June 19: Since the protagonist heard a voice she attributed to a deceased person, this may illustrate why some people, such as Shakespeare, have believed in ghosts.

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