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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Monday, August 21, 2023

“The Nickel Boys” (post 2) by Colson Whitehead: Author’s probable multiple personality trait

“Whitehead has described the characters as ‘two different parts of my personality,’ with Elwood Curtis being ‘the optimistic or hopeful part of me that believes we can make the world a better place if we keep working at it,’ and Jack Turner, ‘the cynical side that says no—this country is founded on genocide, murder, and slavery and it will always be that way” (1).


“People get rid of plenty when they move—sometimes they’re changing not just places but personalities” (2, p. 138).

Comment: Different “Parts" and switching among different personalities are features of multiple personality trait.

1. Wikipedia. The Nickel Boys. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nickel_Boys

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

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