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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Tuesday, June 20, 2023

“Identity” (post 4) by Nora Roberts: Serial killer hears voice laughing at him in his head


“…the bitch lived her life on the other side of the country, laughing at him as she sat in that big-ass house. He heard her laughing even when he left the light on at night. He imagined killing her countless times, in countless ways. But those sweet, sweet dreams shattered to shards when he heard her laughing…” (1, p. 339).


Comment: The serial killer does not cover his ears, because he knows that the “bitch” is on the other side of the country and that her laughter is coming from inside his own head…He wants to kill her to free himself from his obsession with her laughter. She is not merely under his skin, but inside his head.


When someone seems to have, and hear, other people in his head, it is called either multiple personality or writing a novel. A serial killer with undiagnosed multiple personality disorder might benefit from a correct diagnosis and specific psychotherapy for it. Novelists may “kill” the people in their head by writing the novel, unless it is a serial.


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

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