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.

— If you read only recent posts, you miss most of what this site has to offer.

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Thursday, July 6, 2023

“Great Expectations” (post 3) by Charles Dickens: Hypnosis in this novel and in author’s real life


“Far into the night, Miss Havisham’s words [to Pip re Estella], 

‘Love her, love her, love her!’ sounded in my ears. I adapted them for my own repetition, and said to my pillow, ‘I love her, I love her, love her!’ hundreds of times’ (1, p. 243).


Comment: In real life, Dickens was a student and practitioner of hypnosis (a.k.a. mesmerism) (2). The above is one example of the power of suggestion (hypnosis) used by characters in this novel.


Clinical Note: Hypnosis may be used in the diagnosis and treatment of multiple personality, because it may temporarily weaken the regular personality’s ability to suppress and hide the alternate personalities, who usually remain hidden behind-the-scenes, but whose coming out and cooperation is needed for successful treatment.


I don’t know if Dickens, when he used hypnosis on other people, ever accidentally came upon cases of multiple personality.


Comment: Intentionally or inadvertently, Dickens probably used self-hypnosis in his own creative writing process. Search “Dickens” in this blog.


Warning: Using intrusive or uncovering hypnosis with someone, without your having expertise in the treatment of multiple personality, may precipitate a crisis. So don’t do this at home.


1. Charles Dickens. Great Expectations [1860-61]. London, Penguin Books, 1996

2. Fred Kaplan. Dickens and Mesmerism: The Hidden Springs of Fiction. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1975. 

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