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, April 24, 2023

“Are you there God? It’s me, Margaret” (post 1) by Judy Blume: Conversations with God or a psychological defense?


                          “Are you there God? It’s me, Margaret.

                           We’re moving today. I’m so scared

                           God. I’ve never lived anywhere but

                           here. Suppose I hate my new school?

                           Suppose everybody there hates me?

                           Please help me God. Don’t let New

                           Jersey be too horrible. Thank you” (1, p. 1).


Since Margaret, almost twelve, has a Christian mother and a Jewish father, but has not practiced either religion, her so-called conversations with God may be a metaphor for a psychological defense against adolescent angst.


Only halfway through the book, I don’t yet know whether Margaret is having conversations with an imaginary friend (2) or a “helper” alternate personality (3, p. 109), or whether the novel will provide psychological evidence one way or the other. But I am skeptical that a non-religious person would have conversations with God.


1. Judy Blume. Are you there God? It’s me, Margaret. Richard Jackson/ Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 1970/2014.

2. Wikipedia. “Imaginary Friend.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaginary_friend

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


April 25: I finished the novel, but have nothing to add.

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