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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Friday, June 20, 2025

“The Seal Wife” (novel) by Kathryn Harrison

Protagonist is divided into parts that have minds of their own—alternate personalities—which show the author’s tendency toward multiple personality (a.k.a. “dissociative identity)”:


“The fifth glass—he doesn’t want to swallow it. Well, he does, some of him does. His brain says swallow; his throat says no. Still who’s in charge? And he’s not sorry after he gets it down. Because this is a drunkenness that allows sublime substitutions" (1, p. 89).


Additional Comment: For reasons other than the above-noted dissociative tendencies, I tend to agree with Kirkus Reviews on this novel (2), but not with its harsh language.


1. Kathryn Harrison. The Seal Wife. New York, Random House, 2002.

2. Kirkus Reviews. "The Seal Wife" https://kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/kathryn-harrison/the-seal-wife/


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