“Deliverance” by James Dickey: Author has dialogues between different components of himself in a multiple-personality creative process

“I may not have had everything to do with this—with creating this—I said to myself in a silent voice that was different from my usual silent voice, but I have had something to do with it. Never before had I had such a powerful sense of being in a place I had created” (1, p. 14)…

“I think,” I said, “that we’ll never get out of this gorge alive.”

Did I say that? I thought. Yes, dream man said, you did. You said it and you believe it” (1, p. 138).

 “What can we do?”

 “We can do three things,” I said, and some other person began to tell me what they were…

  “I liked hearing the sound of my voice in the mountain speech, especially in the dark; it sounded like somebody who knew where he was and knew what he was doing…” (1, p. 140).

Comment: Creative process has involved internal dialogues among alternate personalities.

1. James Dickey. Deliverance. New York, Mariner Classics, 1970/2023.