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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MPD Textbooks: — Frank W. Putnam, MD. Diagnosis and Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) (a.k.a. Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), New York, The Guilford Press, 1989. —James G. Friesen, PhD. Uncovering the Mystery of MPD, (includes discussion of demonic possession) Eugene, Oregon, Wipf and Stock Publishers,1997.

Monday, August 9, 2021

“Aurora Leigh” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (post 5): Ending possibly explained by multiple personality


Marian Says She’s Still Dead

“But for me, Once Killed, this ghost of Marian loves no more, No more..except the child!..no more at all. I told your cousin, sir, that I was dead; And now, she thinks I’ll get up from my grave…” (1, p. 297).


She feels that her dissociated (ghostly) Marian personality had been a degraded hero-worshipper, but her mothering Marian personality is upstanding and self-respecting.


Romney’s Blindness

Since there is no clear medical explanation, he may have had what used to be called “hysterical blindness.”


“Visual disturbances, ranging from ‘hysterical diplopia’ [double vision] to complete blindness, are reported in about a fifth of MPD patients” (2, p. 66).


Aurora’s Hidden Love for Romney

“Now I know I loved you always, Romney” (1, p. 305).


Aurora may have had warring male (writing) and female (loving) personalities: “It seems as if I had a man in me, Despising such a woman” (1, p. 221). But now these personalities have made peace.


1. Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Aurora Leigh [1856/1859]. Edited by Margaret Reynolds. A Norton Critical Edition. New York, W. W. Norton, 1996.

2. Frank W. Putnam, MD. Diagnosis and Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder. New York, The Guilford Press, 1989.

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