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, August 29, 2024

“My Brilliant Friend” (post 2) by Elena Ferrante: Author switches from “multiple personality” perspective to “dissociative identity” perspective


Comment:The psychiatric condition that used to be called “multiple personality” changed its official psychiatric name to “dissociative identity,” but both names are useful, depending on the circumstances. I used the older term in post 1, because the character, Elena, implied that she did not feel that her regular personality was always in full control of her actions. But years later, in 1958, her brilliant friend, Lila, had her first episode of “dissolving margins.” Lila said that on those occasions “the outlines of people and things suddenly dissolved, disappeared” (1, p. 89).


Elena Ferrante is well-known for having hidden her true name. The beginning of this novel suggests that multiple personality (a.k.a. dissociative identity) may have been involved. Of course, her very high-functioning suggests it would be what I call a “trait,” not a disorder or mental illness.


1. Elena Ferrante. My Brilliant Friend. Trans. Ann Goldstein. New York, Europa Editions, 2011/2024. 

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