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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Thursday, July 18, 2024

“Remain Silent” (post 1) by transgender lawyer-novelist Robyn Gigl: Italicized voice in character’s head suggests author may have multiple personality trait, a creative asset of most successful novelists


“Gordon took a deep breath. Don’t screw this up” (1, p. 38).


Comment: The italicized words—“Don’t screw this up”—are not merely thought by Gordon, which would be “I can’t screw this up,” but are addressed to him, as though by a voice in his head, which suggests the voice of an alternate personality in multiple personality.


But since Gordon is neither labeled nor intended to have multiple personality, the above probably reflects an ordinary way of thinking by the author, as discussed in many past posts of this blog about the “multiple personality trait” of most successful novelists.


The possible relation between being transgender and having multiple personality trait is controversial, but the issue is raised by the fact that most persons with multiple personality will have an opposite-gender alternate personality, which, if dominating, would make the person feel genuinely transgender.


1. Robyn Gigl. Remain Silent. New York, Kensington, 2023. 

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