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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Saturday, August 26, 2023

“The Tom Hanks Enigma” by David Gardner: Without Reading Hanks' 2023 Novel, Biographer is Puzzled


“Even now, close friends like Steven Spielberg and Meg Ryan admit they don’t truly know Tom. The only residue of the confused boy from Northern California remains in the silent reveries he can fall into even in a crowded room.


“It is like a switch being flicked in his head, taking him away from the present to somewhere no one…can reach.


“In those moments, Tom Hanks the movie star is gone. He’s little Tommy reaching for the pedals of his father’s car.


“Trying to see how far he can go” (1).


Comment: Hanks' new novel (2), which I’ve ordered, may indicate how his mind works. Does he have multiple personality trait like most novelists and some actors?


1. David Gardner. The Tom Hanks Enigma: The Biography of the World’s most Intriguing Movie Star. London, John Blake, 2007.

2. Tom Hanks. The Making of Another Motion Picture Masterpiece: A Novel. Knopf, 2023. 

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