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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Sunday, August 20, 2023

“The Nickel Boys” (post 1) by Colson Whitehead:  A voice in the author’s head is acknowledged

“Later that afternoon as he chased a fat, buzzing fly around the store, Elwood thought there probably weren’t a lot of white kids in Tallahassee who studied at the college level. He who gets behind in a race must forever remain behind or run faster than the man in front” (1, pp. 39-40).


“I quote the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. a bunch; it was energizing to hear his voice in my head” (1, Acknowledgments, p. 212).


Comment: The author and/or his character, Elwood, hear a voice in their head, which was probably the voice of an alternate personality who quotes the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr: Search “italicized voices” in this blog for related past posts.


1. Colson Whitehead. The Nickel Boys. New York, Anchor Books, 2019.

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