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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Monday, June 26, 2023

“Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow” (post 1) by Gabrielle Zevin: Sam has “secret part.” Sam and Sadie try to create video game paracosm

“Without knowing why, Sam had tried to keep Sadie and Marx apart…There was another secret part of him that feared they would prefer each other to him” (1, p. 71).


Comment: People with undiagnosed multiple personality often refer to their alternate personalities as “parts” of themselves of which they are only vaguely aware, but which seem to have minds of heir own.


Sadie and Sam are planning to work together to create a successful video game, which would entail the creation of an imaginary world. They have not used the word, but an imaginary world is a “paracosm” (2), which, along with imaginary companions, are the two main talents of normal childhood that help traumatized children develop multiple personality as a psychological defense and/or an asset in creating video games and novels.


1. Gabrielle Zevin. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 2022.

2. Wikipedia. “Paracosm.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracosm

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