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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Thursday, October 26, 2023

“Lies and Sorcery” (post 2) by Elsa Morante: Both Anna and her mother appear to have multiple personality

“She [Anna’s mother] often spoke to herself at home also, almost as if she were unburdening herself to an invisible friend, telling her of the injustices she suffered and her cruel fate. Her habitual crises became increasingly violent, and overcome by a furious hatred for herself, she beat herself, banging her fists and head against the wall. Anna would hold her to stop her from injuring herself…‘And you,’ [Anna’s mother] exclaimed, staring off into space, ‘why are you looking at me? What do you want from me?” (1, p. 118).


Comment: Anna’s mother seems to be talking to, and looking at, an alternate personality. Whose [Anna’s mother’s or the alternate personality’s] fists and head are being banged against the wall? And by whom? Her, or her alternate personality?


“Your wish has come true,” she [Anna] told herself. Didn’t you always know that you and he were destined to meet…So why are you so astonished? (1, p. 137).


Comment: Italicized third-person suggests this is probably the voice of an alternate personality in Anna’s head.


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

2. Wikipedia. “House of Liars” [previous translation]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Liars

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