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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Wednesday, November 1, 2023

“Maeve Rising: Coming Out Trans in Corporate America" by Maeve Duvally: Does the author hear a “voice” or have a “thought” on memoir’s first page?

The first line of the first page is “The voice came out of nowhere,” which apparently refers to the idea “I want to wear makeup tonight” in the middle of the page, but the latter idea is immediately preceded by “a bewildering thought overtook me.”


So it is unclear whether the idea of wanting to wear makeup that night originated as a “voice” or a “thought.”


Comment: What difference does it make?


While a voice could be the voice of an alter ego or an alternate personality, a thought would probably be an idea of the author’s regular self.


Furthermore, since the author used “voice” first and “thought” second, and since hearing voices is less socially acceptable than having thoughts, the switch from “voice” to “thought” might have been self-censorship.


1. Maeve Duvally. Maeve Rising: Coming out Trans in Corporate America (a memoir). Sibylline Press, 2023.

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