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.

Friday, March 20, 2026

“On Morrison” by Namwali Serpell: Preliminary Dissociative Clues


I have just begun reading this book about Nobel Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison by the eminent Harvard English professor, Namwali Serpell (2), whose own novels I have ordered, but not yet received.


My own past posts have suggested that Toni Morrison had the novelist’s normal, creative version of multiple personality (a.k.a.”dissociative identity”) which I call “multiple personality trait,” a creative asset. There are three possible clues to this at the beginning of Serpell’s book.


Three Possible Clues to Morrison’s Creative Trait


1.“The two Pecolas discuss... in a mono-dia-logue...” (1, p. 43).


2. On what psychological basis does Serpell interpret a character’s “shadow self” as “black humor” instead of an alternate personality (1, p. 43)?


3.“In this way it produces the effect of a particular feature of this character’s consciousness: a repeated dissociative forgetfulness, or fugue state, during which she loses her grasp on the names and uses of things" (1, p. 109).


Comment: To read past posts on “Toni Morrison,” search her in this blog.


1. Namwali Serpell: On Morrison. New York, Hogarth, 2026.

2. Wikipedia. “Namwali Serpell.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namwali_Serpell 

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