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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Friday, October 20, 2023

“Holly” (post 1 ) by Stephen King: Making Sense of Multiple Hollys

“What if she started jibba-jabba-jibbering when talking to those boys?

  I wouldn’t, she thinks. That was another girl” (1, p. 65).


“In a growl utterly unlike her usual soft tone of voice, Holly says, ‘Because she told me’ ” (1, p. 85).


Comment: Holly is saying that her "jibba-jabba-jibbering" in the past was spoken by a different one of her personalities, “another girl.”


And “a growl utterly unlike her usual soft tone of voice” is the voice of another one of her personalities.


Therapists of persons with multiple personalities come to recognize the different personalities by their consistently different mannerisms, including their ways of talking and tone of voice.


It is difficult for Stephen King to be clear about what is going on above, because he hasn’t explicitly acknowledged the issue of multiple personality. But a reader aware of that issue can make sense of it.


1. Stephen King. Holly. New York, Scribner, 2023.

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