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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Monday, May 12, 2025

“Look Closer” by David Ellis: Characters Narrate the Chapters, and one Character has an “Alter Ego,” suggestive of Multiple Personality


Narration

Chapters in this murder mystery are narrated in the first-person by the characters, which is an engaging format, but it suggests the characters have minds of their own, which is the essence of alternate personalities in multiple personality (2).


Alter Ego

One of the characters, Vicky, says, “I didn’t grow up in West Virginia. Vicky Lanier, my alter ego did. But my father was an avid hunter and took me with him sometimes. He’d take me to the shooting range, too, and let me fire his guns, at least his handguns” (1, p. 269). Search “alter ego” in this blog.


Comment: Later in this novel, does Vicky’s alter ego participate in a murder? I cite the above in support of this blog's thesis that many novelists have what I call “multiple personality trait,” a normal, creative version of multiple personality.


1. David Ellis. Look Closer. New York, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2022.

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

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