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.

— Share site with friends.

Thursday, September 5, 2024

“Midnight Fugue” (post 2) a novel by Reginald Hill: Novel’s diagnosis of character who runs away, and how the character describes his subjective experience when he returns

“State of fugue posited by medical experts” (1, p. 166).


“For a long time I was just a sackful of fragments trying to learn how to reassemble itself…I was in pieces. I didn’t just run away and hide from you, Gina [his wife]. I hid from myself…telling it straight isn’t easy because of the [memory] gaps (1. pp. 280-281).


Comment: A dissociative fugue is used as a plot device in this complex detective story, which is the last book in a 24-novel series.


1. Reginald Hill. Midnight Fugue. (A Dalziel & Pascoe Mystery). New York, Harper, 2009/2021.

Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Thank you for taking the time to comment (whether you agree or disagree) and ask questions (simple or expert). I appreciate your contribution.

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)