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.

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Saturday, March 15, 2014

Tomorrow’s New York Times Book Review: Philip Roth addresses readers who do not have Multiple Personality

At the end of the interview, Roth says (and then elaborates at considerable length), “Whoever looks for the writer’s thinking in the words and thoughts of his characters is looking in the wrong direction.” Since the interviewer didn’t ask about this, whom is Roth addressing and why is this an issue?

He is addressing readers like me (before I formulated Multiple Identity Literary Theory), who do not have multiple personality. Because, when novelists disavow the words and thoughts of their characters—as many novelists repeatedly do—readers who do not have multiple personality inevitably think that the novelists must be joking or lying. And such readers will continue to think that way until hell freezes over or they read this blog.

I hope the latter is sooner.

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