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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Sunday, November 5, 2023

“The Girl Who Survived” (post 1) by Lisa Jackson: Protagonist converses with an italicized voice in her head


“…she noticed a newspaper on a nearby rack. The headline screamed:

KILLER IN COLD LAKE MASSACRE TO BE RELEASED

JONAS MCINTYRE TO BE SET FREE

Kara’s stomach soured. Bile rose in her throat…” (1, pp. 32-33).


“…Maybe [Kara thought] once Jonas’s release faded to the background, becoming just another forgotten news story…maybe then she could find a way, somehow, to finally put this all behind her.


‘Oh, sure.

What are the chances of that?’


“Shut up,” she said aloud, hoping to still that horrid little voice in her head, the one that reminded her she would never be normal, always be labeled a freak, forever looked at as the survivor of an unimaginable event” (1, p. 93).


Comment: Search “italicized” in this blog for prior discussions of this way novelists distinguish voices in the head—a common symptom of multiple personality— from ordinary thoughts.


But this novel does not appear to be interested in multiple personality, per se. So why is a symptom of multiple personality in this novel? It probably reflects what I call “multiple personality trait,” which is common among successful novelists.


1. Lisa Jackson. The Girl Who Survived. New York, Zebra Books, 2022. 

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