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, September 10, 2024

“Drive Your Plow Over The Bones of The Dead" (post 2) by Olga Tokarczuk: Protagonist-narrator lies to police (and reader) due to regular personality’s memory gap for threat by her angry alternate personality


“I knew that the Police like to have everything confirmed.

“Is it true that you behaved aggressively during the hunting here, in the locality?”

“I would say that I behaved angrily, not aggressively. There’s a difference. I expressed my Anger because they were killing Animals.”

“Did you make death threats?”

“Anger can prompt one to utter various words, but it can also make one fail to remember them afterward.”

“There are witnesses who have stated that you shouted, and I quote—‘I’ll kill you (obscenity), you’ll be punished for these crimes. You have no shame, you’re not afraid of anything. I’ll beat your brains out.’”

He read it dispassionately, which I found amusing.

"Why are you smiling?” asked the second one in a wounded tone.

“I find it comical that I could have said such things. I’m a peaceful person…” (1, p. 215).


Comment: In this blog, search “memory gaps” and “lying” for past posts on these recurrent issues in multiple personality.


1. Olga Tokarczuk. Drive Your Plow Over The Bones of The Dead. Trans. Antonia Lloyd-Jones., New York, Riverhead Books, 2009/2019.  

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