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.

— If you read only recent posts, you miss most of what this site has to offer.

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Tuesday, September 17, 2024

“Fairy Tale” (post 2) a novel by Stephen King: Incidental remarks and details may reflect author’s multiple personality trait


“I think sometimes we know where we’re going even when we think we don’t” (1, p. 111). Comment: This may refer to the author’s intuition that an alternate personality may have known the rest of the story before his regular personality did.


“Doing that made the inside me feel absurd, like a little kid playing cowboy. The outside me was glad to have the weight of it, and knowing it was fully loaded" (1, p. 165). Comment: The “inside me” may mean a child-aged alternate personality and “outside me” may mean an adult alternate personality. Child-aged alternate personalities are common in multiple personality, because multiple personality usually begins in childhood.


“Part of me (one personality) wanted to eject the tape…But I (another personality) didn’t. Couldn’t. Trust me, Charlie. I’m depending on you” (1, p. 168). Comment: Italics often indicate a voice in the character’s head. Search “italics” in this blog for discussion of voices in past posts on other novels. Also search “parts,” a  common euphemism for alternate personalities.


Additional Comment: The protagonist has a stereotypical history of childhood trauma for a person who later develops multiple personality: His mother died when he was young and his father became an alcoholic. But a happy ending is quite possible.


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

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