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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Wednesday, October 25, 2023

“Lies and Sorcery” (post 1) by Elsa Morante: Introduction by Unreliable Narrator


“Lying’s poisonous evil slithers among the branches of my family tree…But you mustn’t hold this against me or my story, as the whole point here is to gather reliable proof of my family’s long-inbred insanity…But to become a devotee and disciple of deception!…Such was my existence!…And although throughout this book you’ll come to know, dear reader, more than one character afflicted with our disease of delusion, you’ve already met the sickest character of them all—me, Elisa, the writer of this book…


“Perhaps by reconstructing my family’s story, I will finally be able to solve the mystery of my childhood as well as discover the truth behind all the other family myths…This is why I obey their voices and write. Who knows, perhaps with their help I may at last be able to leave this room (1, pp. 15-24).


Comment: Unreliable narrators may be a clue to multiple personality. Also search "lying" in this blog.


1. Elsa Morante. Lies and Sorcery (1948 novel). Trans. from Italian by Jenny McPhee. New York, New York Review Books, 2023, 775 pages. 

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