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.

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Friday, December 13, 2024

“Ghosts” by Dolly Alderton: Max disappears after declaring his love for Nina—he “ghosts” her—Later, both may have features of multiple-personality, but the author does not label it

“There was daftness that I shared with Joe, and a seriousness that I shared with Max. Both were parts of me and both were true, but both seemed so in conflict with each opposing representative present. I hadn’t anticipated that this merging of people meant this merging of selves—it made me think anxiously about myself in a way that was unfamiliar (1, p. 102).


“Only one part of me remained in my skin while other Ninas detached and circulated in the room. There was one who was a spectator of the clawing and clinging; who couldn’t believe Max was inside my house and inside me…One Nina rejoiced, another one was scared. Another Nina examined him…(1, p. 244).


Comment: "Parts” of Nina and multiple Ninas are treated as a kind of psychology familiar to the author, suggesting the author may have multiple personality trait, but not think of it in such terms.


1. Dolly Alderton. Ghosts. New York, Vintage Books, 2022.

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