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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Monday, January 29, 2024

“Squeeze Me” by Carl Hiaasen: Why is a split consciousness and sense of self not seen in this character until the second half of this novel?


“He grinned when Angie walked in.

‘What’s so amusing, Jerry?’

‘It’s the first time I’ve seen you out of uniform.’

‘This is my jaunty alter ego,’ she said. ‘I do have a life, you know’ ”(1, p. 203).


“Hell, a ten-footer [python] is big enough to choke somebody,’ Angie heard herself saying, just not big enough to to swallow ‘em” (1, p. 226).


Comment: Is this a natural development of the character or did a different personality of the writer take over? I will think about this as I read the second half of this novel.


Added Jan. 30: I read, but lost interest in, the rest of this mostly plot-driven novel. Nevertheless, the examples noted above are suggestive of multiple personality trait in the author.


1. Carl Hiaasen. Squeeze Me. New York, Vintage Crime, 2020/2021. 

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