Both Helen Oyeyemi (yesterday’s post) and Joyce Carol Oates (1) have complex multiplicity   

                                                             

“Your struggle with your buried self, or selves, yields your art”…Without these ill-understood drives you might be a superficially happier person…but it isn’t likely that you will create anything of substance (1, p. 24). 

“I acknowledge that I share a name and a face with ‘JCO,’ this expression suggests, but this is a mere convenience. Please don’t be deceived! 'JCO’ is not a person, nor even a personality [in the usual sense] but a process that has resulted in a sequence of texts” (1, p. 153).

Comment: Joyce Carol Oates says her mind is too unusual to call ‘JCO’ a “personality” in the usual sense, but it is not her regular self. Also see old past posts on Joyce Carol Oates.

1. Joyce Carol Oates. The Faith of a Writer (Life Craft Art). NewYork, ECCOHarperCollins, 2004.