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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Tuesday, November 14, 2023

“The Firm” (post 2) by John Grisham: At the end, protagonist tells wife “I never wanted to be a lawyer anyway,” which may be truth spoken in jest, suggesting author had been an unreliable narrator of his protagonist


“Are you scared, Mitch?”

“Terrified.”

“Me too. This is crazy.”

“But we made it, Abby. We’re alive. We’re safe. We’re together.”

“But what about tomorrow? And the next day?”

“…There are worse things than sailing around the Caribbean with eight million bucks in the bank…"

“Abby,” Mitch said slowly…“I have a confession to make.”

“I’m listening.”

“The truth is, I never wanted to be a lawyer anyway.”

“Oh, really.”

“Naw. Secretly, I’ve always wanted to be a sailor…”

“Then drink up, sailor. Let’s get drunk and make a baby” (1, p. 527).


Comment: After what I quoted in post 1, the novel made no dives into the protagonist’s mind, until the ending quoted above.


Search “unreliable narrator” in this blog for discussion of its relation to multiple personality.


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

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