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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Sunday, November 19, 2023

“A Painted House” by John Grisham: Seven-year-old Luke witnesses a brutal murder, but does not have symptoms of multiple personality, a posttraumatic disorder, because of his supportive, loving family


After reading Grisham’s novel, The Firm (1), and finding minimal, if any, symptoms of multiple personality (see past posts), I wondered whether Grisham is among the ten percent of successful novelists who lack multiple personality trait, a creative asset, or whether The Firm was not a fair sample of his work. 


So I decided to read A Painted House (2), a markedly different novel by John Grisham.


Conclusion: Based on these two novels, John Grisham does not appear to have multiple personality trait.


1. John Grisham. The Firm [1991]. New York, Vintage Books, 2016.

2. John Grisham. A Painted House [2001]. New York, Bantam Books Trade Paperbacks, 2012. 

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