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, June 19, 2015

Disney-Pixar and Pete Docter’s animated movie “Inside Out”: Is it about a young girl’s various emotions or about her normal multiple personality?

“The story takes place mostly in the head of an 11-year-old girl named Riley…The real action…unfolds among Riley’s personified feelings…Riley’s brain is controlled by five busy, contentious emotions: Fear, Anger, Disgust, Sadness, and Joy” (A. O. Scott, New York Times, June 19, 2015). Each of these characters looks different and has its own voice. The five voices in Riley’s head are furnished by five different actors: three women and two men.

In multiple personality, it is quite common for each of the various alternate personalities (alters) to have its predominant emotion, its own tone of voice, and its own self-image. It is also common to have personalities of the opposite sex. And the alters are sometimes visualized by the person or heard as voices in the person’s head. Moreover, one of the main ways to distinguish voices of alters from ordinary thoughts (talking to oneself) is that alters argue with the person (host personality) and among themselves. They are, as A. O. Scott puts it, “contentious.” They have minds of their own.

In contrast, persons without multiple personality do not hear voices arguing in their head.

Since Riley does not have significant distress and/or dysfunction from her multiple personality—in fact, it is helpful to her—she has normal multiple personality (as opposed to multiple personality disorder).

Thus, one of the themes of this movie is that normal multiple personality is a good thing and may help people cope.
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