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.

— Share site with friends.

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.

Thursday, November 3, 2022

“The Maytrees” by Annie Dillard (post 3): Who was responsible for misspelling an unusual word?


Following the accidental injury of their young son, Petie, the married Maytrees have just split, which reminds me of a similar marital breakup in Anne Tyler’s The Accidental Tourist (1985).


“His leaving condemned Petie to being spoiled. And stuck with [his wife, Lou’s] pauciloquoys [sic] (1, p. 70).


“Pauciloquoys” is a misspelling of “pauciloquy,” which means brevity of speech. Who is to blame for using and misspelling this unusual word?


I could blame the publisher’s editor and proofreader, but they probably thought that any author who was erudite enough to use such a word would certainly know how to spell it.


My guess is that the misspelled word was dictated to the author by an alternate personality she trusted, which is a creative, but not a foolproof, system.


1. Annie Dillard. The Maytrees. New York, Harper Perennial, 2008.

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