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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Saturday, July 1, 2023

“If We Dream Too Long” by Goh Poh Seng: Protagonist looked like a stranger even to himself when he looked in a mirror


“Kwang Meng could see his own image reflected in the dressing table mirror. He looked like a stranger even to himself and this made him divert his gaze” (1, p. 62).


Comment: “MPD patients often report seeing themselves as different people when they look into a mirror” (2, p. 62).


I do NOT think that the protagonist or author of this novel had multiple personality disorder, but that they possibly had “multiple personality trait,” which I define as a mentally well, creative version of multiple personality, possibly present in 90% of novelists and up to 30% of the general public.


Search “mirror” and/or “mirrors” in this blog for posts on other novels and novelists. 


Search “Goh Poh Seng” in Wikipedia (3).


Added July 2: At the end, the protagonist's father is disabled, leaving Kwang Meng head of household, holding a low-pay job, and with poor expectations. The author seems to be saying that this is what happens "if we dream too long."


1. Go Poh Seng. If We Dream Too Long. Singapore, NUS Press, 1972/2016.

2. Frank W. Putnam, MD. Diagnosis and Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder. New York, The Guilford Press, 1989.

3. Wikipedia. “Go Poh Seng.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goh_Poh_Seng 

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