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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Saturday, September 14, 2024

“Fairy Tale” (post 1) a novel by Stephen King: Protagonist has italicized thoughts, “only it didn’t seem like my thought at all.” How is it possible to both have, and not have, various thoughts?


“…I can’t leave her [the patient’s dog]. I’ll have to take her to the goddam hospital…” [says the patient].

“They won’t let you," I said. “You must know that.”

“Then I’m not going" [says the patient].

“Oh yes you are, I thought. And then I thought something else, only it didn’t seem like my thought at all. I’m sure it was, but it didn’t seem that way. We had a deal. Never mind picking up litter on the highway, this is where you hold up your end of it” (1, p. 26).


Comment: In this blog, search “italicized” to see past posts with examples from other novels. Novelists may or may not understand how a person or character can both have and not have particular thoughts. Undiagnosed, even unintentional, alternate personalities, make it possible. 


1. Stephen King. Fairy Tale. New York, Scribner, 2022/2023. 

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