No School of Literary Theory for Multiple Personality

As we saw in the last post, which quoted Margaret Atwood, novelists have long known, or at least suspected, that they have multiple personality. However, novelists only create literature. They are not in charge of literary theory. And of the more than twenty schools of literary theory, not one addresses multiple personality.

What about the psychoanalytic school of literary theory? Classical Freudian theory—whose model of the mind has only one, undivided consciousness—implies that multiple personality is theoretically impossible.

Multiple personality involves multiple (or divided) consciousness, with each alternate personality defined by its having an autonomous consciousness, a mind of its own. They—autonomous characters, alternate narrators, alternate personalities—think for themselves; therefore, they are. And Freud's single-consciousness model cannot account for how this could ever happen.

The history of Freud’s mistake is discussed in the June 2013 post.

Margaret Atwood on the Multiple Personality of Writers

“Duplicity: The jekyll hand, the hyde hand, and the slippery double, Why there are always two” is the title of chapter 2 in Margaret Atwood’s nonfiction Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing (New York, Anchor Books, 2003).

She speaks, first of all, about herself, but considers it true of all creative writers. She says that the idea is not new and is no secret:

“There has been a widespread suspicion among writers—widespread over at least the past century and a half—that there are two of him sharing the same body, with a hard-to-predict and difficult-to-pinpoint moment during which the one turns into the other. When writers have spoken consciously of their own double natures, they’re likely to say that one half does the living, the other half the writing…”

from October 26, 2013
Toni Morrison and The Novelist’s Characters

Toni Morrison: Conversations (Edited by Carolyn C. Danard, 2008) was also my source for the post, “Who Wrote Toni Morrison’s Jazz.” Morrison makes various remarks in these interviews that are relevant to this blog, but I prefer to limit myself to passages which lend themselves to quotation—so Morrison can speak for herself—which leaves only the following, from a 1985 interview:

“[Sula] came as many characters do—all of them don’t—rather full-fleshed and complete almost immediately, including her name. I felt this enormous intimacy. I mean I knew exactly who she was, but I had trouble trying to make her…into the kind of person that would upset everybody…And, by the time I finished the book, Sula, I missed her. I know the feeling of missing characters who are in fact, by that time, much more real than real people” (p. 26).

“…the people I would call on to help me to verify some phrase or some word or something would be the people in the book. I mean I would just conjure them up and ask them, you know, about one thing or another. And they are usually very cooperative if they are fully realized and if you know their name. And if you don’t know their names, they don’t talk much” (p. 27).

Thus, for Toni Morrison (and perhaps most other novelists):

1. many characters come rather complete, almost immediately, with a feeling of intimacy,

2. by the time the book ends, characters may be much more real than real people,

3. characters would help Morrison with things that she didn’t know or wasn’t sure about,

4. but if you don’t know their names, characters don’t talk much.

Comments:

1. Novelists don’t consciously construct many of their characters. They spring fully formed, like Athena from the head of Zeus. 

2. I’m not sure what it means for characters to be “much more real than real people,” perhaps only that while the novelist is immersed in writing the novel, her focus on everything else is reduced, but another possibility is that the world of the novel is absolutely more real to the novelist than real life.

3. To the novelist, characters are like autonomous people, with minds of their own.

4. The fourth point is the same as my clinical experience when I would try to talk to my patients’ alternate personalities. Knowing the name of the personality was often the key.

Literary “Voice” Misunderstood?

When literary dictionaries and theory talk of voice, they are not talking about hearing voices.

So, in the last post, when I quoted Toni Morrison as saying that she looked for a voice to narrate her novel, Jazz, and she went on to describe how the narrator voice interacted with the character voices, people naturally think that she was speaking metaphorically. And if she was, then my interpretation of it all in terms of multiple personality was really stupid.

But when Dickens (June 2013 post) and other novelists speak of voices—as in hearing the voices of their characters—they are not speaking metaphorically. They are hearing voices.

Does that mean Dickens and other novelists are crazy? No. Because there are two kinds of voices: 1. psychotic voices, as in schizophrenia, and 2. non-psychotic voices, as in multiple personality (dissociative identity). Psychotic voices are incoherent and/or delusional. Non-psychotic voices are coherent and rational, and are the voices of alternate personalities.

Who Wrote Toni Morrison’s Jazz?

In a previous post, I quoted Toni Morrison as saying that her characters are autonomous, but she keeps them under control, since, ultimately, it is her novel, not theirs. In terms of multiple personality, the narrator is Toni Morrison, and the characters are her autonomous, alternate personalities.

However, according to Toni Morrison, she was not the narrator of her novel, Jazz. In other words, both the characters and the narrator were autonomous, alternate personalities. To quote Toni Morrison:

“So, when I was thinking of who was going to tell this story…I was looking for a voice…

“So, then the voice realizes, after hearing other voices, that the narrative is not going to be at all what it predicted. The more it learns about the characters (and they are not what the voice thought), it has to go on…I’ve done this in other places but not as radically as here. The thing is, I could not think of the voice as a person; I know everybody refers to “I” as a woman (because I’m a woman, I guess), but for me, it was very important that the “I”…never sits down, it never walks, because it’s a book. The voice is the voice of a talking book…It’s a book talking, but few people read it like that…

“…so no one’s in control.”

So, who wrote Jazz? According to Toni Morrison, it was, subjectively, psychologically, not Toni Morrison. It was, call it what you will—a voice, a book, an alternate personality—a psychological entity other than the one who goes by the name of Toni Morrison.

I am writing this blog, because when writers say things like that, most people don’t hear and respect what they say. But I do. And I hope you will, too.

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1. “Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison Speaks about Her Novel Jazz,” an interview by Angels Carabi, 1993. Reprinted in Toni Morrison: Conversations, edited by Carolyn C. Denard, University Press of Mississippi, 2008, pp. 91-97.

Multiple Personality (Dissociative Identity) Pervades Toni Morrison’s Novels

Dangerous Freedom: Fusion and Fragmentation in Toni Morrison’s Novels. Philip Page. Jackson, University Press of Mississippi, 1995.

“The trauma of racism is...the severe fragmentation of the self” (Morrison, “Unspeakable”) (p. 26).

“With her exploration of splitness, Morrison renders the dividedness of the American and African-American cultures: objects are split, bodies are split, psyches are split, families are split, neighborhoods are split, a race is split, a nation is split” (p. 31).

“...the African-American perspective is always at least double, and because the American cultural body is always already fragmented, the American consciousness is inevitably multiple, and the human condition is caught in the endless play of alternatives” (p. 36).

“Pecola [The Bluest Eye] is thus driven to the double division of a split personality and a pariah. Since to a lesser degree most other characters suffer the same double division, the novel implies the inevitability of this pattern: intense external forces (especially racial, economic, and familial) severely strain the characters’ personalities, and in turn those divisions within characters tend to divide them further from others” (p. 51).

“Echoing the other splits, the narration is split among multiple voices.” (p. 53)

“The attempted fusion with another person is most fully exemplified in Sula and Nel’s relationship..Sula and Nel’s near merger into one consciousness...they have difficulty distinguishing one’s thoughts from the other’s…” (p. 68).

“With his multiple identities, Son is a trickster figure, Morrison’s most recognizable one (p. 122)...Having so many identities that he ‘did not always know who he was’…” (p. 124)...Tar Baby is a polyphonic novel (Butler-Evans; Paquet) that has multiple centers and central characters (Rigney) and in which each character seems to have multiple selves (Kubitschek) (p. 132).

Of course, as readers of this blog know, multiplicity is neither unique to Morrison nor a product of postmodernism, since it pervades Dickens, too (see June 2013 post) and is an issue with most novelists to one extent or another.

Who Are a Novelist’s Major Personalities?

1. Recurring Characters
2. Special Minor Characters
3. Alternate Narrators

The first category of major personalities, recurring characters, is obvious, but the second category is not. Occasionally, a novelist will have a minor character who is more rounded, specific, and/or idiosyncratic than the novel would seem to require. For example, the character plays a certain type of music on the harpsichord, which is in no way really necessary to the novel. But it just happens that the novelist relaxes by playing that kind of music on the harpsichord in real life. This is probably a significant personality in the novelist’s real life.

Alternate narrators, who publish their own novels under pseudonyms, are obvious candidates for the category of major personalities. Less obvious are alternate narrators whose writing is published under the novelist’s regular name. Their writing appears as novels that are different from the novelist’s usual writing or as parts of a novelist’s regular novels that express a different viewpoint.

For example, I read a novel which began with character A as the main character and character B as the villain. But in the second half of the novel, character A was a minor character, while character B was the main character, whose evil actions in the first half were virtually forgotten. Yet the novel was written by such an accomplished writer that this inconsistency was not noted in reviews. With other novels, inconsistencies are noticed, but they are explained away as intentional and literary, because the novelist is obviously a very good writer.

What do novelists, themselves, think of these inconsistencies? They may avoid thinking about it and consider it part of the wonderful mystery of artistic creativity. But it is one reason that many novelists don’t like to explain their work. It is difficult for them to explain it, because the novelist you are interviewing is only one of the narrating personalities. And they may simply not know what the other narrators were thinking when they wrote this or that. They may not even know that they have other narrators.

How to Interview a Novelist’s Characters and Narrators

The previous post introduced the idea of interviewing a novelist’s characters. Let me elaborate.

1. Getting The Novelist’s Permission

The novelist has to agree to the idea of interviewing a character. Some novelists might reject the idea as an invasion of privacy or an interference in the relationship with their characters. A novelist might think that it simply doesn’t make sense for their characters to talk to anyone else. And a novelist might fear that doing such an interview would look crazy and damage their reputation.

Other novelists might see such an interview as possibly interesting and even fun.

2. The Novelist Suggests Which Character to Interview

Ask the novelist which character(s) would make the best interview(s). The novelist may know of some characters who have already participated in interviews, either by making comments to the novelist while the latter was being interviewed or by actually having been the one interviewed (unknown to the interviewer).

3. Getting the Character’s Attention

Novelists may have many characters from various novels, and most of them are not paying attention to the outside world at any given moment. They pay attention only when something which concerns or interests them is going on. To get their attention, you need to discuss the story that they were involved in and/or their special interest (if the character is a poet, discuss poetry). Discussing a particular character by name is essential. If you do so, and persist for a good length of time, you will probably get that character’s attention. Of course, during the interview, you must continue to discuss what interests that character. If you change the subject, the character will be gone, and you will be back to just the novelist’s regular personality.

4. The Character Communicates Indirectly or Directly

Will the character talk inside the mind of the novelist, so that the novelist will have to tell the interviewer what the character is saying? Or will the character come out—like the novelist has switched personalities—and speak to you directly? The best predictor is what the character has done in the past. If the character has come out in the past, it will do so again. They may start by speaking to you through the novelist, but as that becomes tedious, they may come out to continue the conversation directly.

5. Interviewing a Novelist’s Other Narrative Voices

If a novelist has published under more than one name, then the author of those other books—addressed by their pseudonym—may be interviewable. Even if all the novelist’s books have been published under only one name, some novelists have more than one narrative voice. If you can clearly identify the implied personality of alternate narrative voices—and refer to the specific novel or aspect of a novel that a particular narrative voice wrote—then you might be able to get the attention of, and interview, each such narrative personality. 

All this may seem ridiculous to some readers, but novelists who have characters with minds of their own, and more than one narrative voice, will relate to the issues.

Stephen King and Toni Morrison Talk With Their Characters, and You Could, Too

In previous posts, King, Morrison, and Dickens have been quoted as saying that they, like most novelists, converse with their characters. So the question arises as to whether you or I, if we were interviewing a novelist, could talk with their characters. After all, if the novelist can speak with them, why couldn’t we?

How would we do it? While facing the novelist, we would address, by name, a specific character. How would it answer? Either it would speak to the novelist, and the novelist would tell us what the character was saying. Or the character would come out (temporarily taking control of the novelist’s body) and speak to us directly. At the end of the conversation, the character would go back inside and the novelist come back out.

How would we know that this was real and not just pretending? Well, I suppose that in this day and age it might be possible to use brain imaging to distinguish the novelist’s ordinary mental state from that of the character’s. But for practical purposes, the only way to distinguish the novelist’s pretending from the character’s really speaking for itself would be to ask the novelist. If the novelist honestly experienced it as happening, then we would accept it as real.

There are three possible reasons for our not being able to speak to a character. First, the novelist might resist, since the relationship with their character is a private affair, and they don’t want us to think they’re crazy. Second, the character might resist, since they don’t know us. Or, since their novel is finished, they might not be immediately available. Third, maybe novelists don’t really experience their characters as having minds of their own (but, the fact is, they keep telling us that they do).

Why Multiple Personality is Not Crazy

The first post yesterday said that normal multiple personality—the kind that many novelists (and others) have—is not crazy. But the second post gave you a link to an article about its clinical counterpart, multiple personality disorder (dissociative identity disorder), and if you read it, you may be thinking that it all seemed pretty crazy to you. So you may be wondering why it is that psychiatry does NOT categorize multiple personality disorder as a psychosis.

First, an analogy to religious differences. If you were brought up in a religious family, have had religious friends, have gone to religious schools, have had your own religious experiences, and you think that it’s absurd to think that the world created itself, then you might think that atheists must be crazy. Similarly, the atheist might think that believers must be crazy. But if the average believer and the average atheist meet and have a conversation, they will find each other to be generally rational and in touch with reality.

And the same might be said about political differences, cultural differences, gender differences, etc. We often think that other people must be “crazy” for seeing things so differently than we do, but when we talk to these people, we have to admit that they are mostly pretty rational and in touch with reality.

Well, if you were to talk to each of the various personalities of a person with multiple personality disorder, you would find that they certainly have their own view of the world, based on their own life experiences and self-image, but that they are mostly pretty rational and in touch with reality. And if that is true of multiple personality disorder, it is even more true of normal multiple personality.

Objective Documentation of Child Abuse and Dissociation in 12 Murderers With Dissociative Identity Disorder
Dorothy Otnow Lewis, M.D., et al., American Journal of Psychiatry 1997; 154:1703-1710

ajp.psychiatryonline.org-data-Journals-AJP-3683-1703.pdf

[One reason for skepticism about the reality of normal multiple personality (the subject of this blog) is doubts that you may have about the reality of its clinical counterpart, multiple personality disorder. So to help remove those doubts, here is an article with eight clear, concise pages of the facts about a series of documented cases of multiple personality disorder. Only a tiny percentage of people with multiple personality disorder commit murder—no people with normal multiple personality do so, at least as a result of the multiple personality—but these murder cases have the advantage of publicly available court records with detailed documentation. And the facts in this article might be helpful to writers who want to write realistic fiction on this subject.]

Stephen King, Toni Morrison, Charles Dickens, and the Denial of Multiple Personality (Dissociative Identity) Due To the Mistaken Belief That It is Crazy

Stephen King’s “Secret Window, Secret Garden” (Four Past Midnight, 1990) and The Dark Half (1989) both have novelists with multiple personality as their main characters. In The Dark Half, the alternate personality is ghost writer of the novelist’s more popular, violent books, written under a pseudonym, implying that novelists write under more than one name, because they have more than one personality who wants to publish.

King’s writing about more than one novelist who has multiple personality would seem to imply that King believes multiple personality is common among novelists. But the remarkable thing is, King never explicitly acknowledges that these characters have multiple personality. For example, in The Dark Half, he explains the novelist’s dark, violent, alternate personality as deriving from brain tissue retained from a twin who died in the womb. King never speaks of multiple personality, per se.

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If Diana Kindron’s essay (cited in a previous post) is right about the presence of a character with multiple personality in Toni Morrison’s Paradise, why are most readings and reviews of that book in denial of the issue? And why does Morrison have such a character, yet never, herself, discuss the issue of multiple personality?

We know from the Paris Review interview (quoted in a previous post) that Morrison relates to her characters as though they were autonomous, thinking beings (and that this is common among novelists). What can we call this phenomenon of autonomous characters other than some sort of multiple personality? We can’t call it imagining or pretending—since, when people imagine or pretend, they have a sense that they are the ones doing it and pulling the strings—whereas here we have something that is subjectively experienced as autonomous beings with minds of their own, which is the way people with multiple personality experience their alternate personalities. Thus, to acknowledge autonomous characters, but not acknowledge some sort of multiple personality, is denial.

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And why are Dickens scholars—including those who have read my essay about Dickens’s multiple personality (June 2013 post) and don’t dispute any of its facts—in denial?

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One of the main reasons for all this denial about multiple personality is the mistaken belief that people with multiple personality are crazy (psychotic), which results in the following fallacious syllogism:

FALSE—People with multiple personality are crazy. 

  TRUE—King, Morrison, Dickens, and most novelists are not crazy.

FALSE—Therefore, most novelists cannot have multiple personality.

In the June 2013 post about Dickens, I point out that even the mental illness, multiple personality disorder (dissociative identity disorder)—which has nothing to do with schizophrenia—is not a psychosis. And most novelists are not mentally ill, and do not have multiple personality disorder, but only what I call “normal multiple personality.”

In short:

TRUE—People with multiple personality are not crazy.

TRUE—King, Morrison, Dickens, and most novelists are not crazy.

TRUE—Therefore, most novelists may have multiple personality, and not be embarrassed or in denial about it.

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Stephen King’s and Toni Morrison’s

Characters With Multiple Personality

Stephen King has characters who have multiple personality, such as the novelist with multiple personality in “Secret Window, Secret Garden” (Four Past Midnight, 1990). Toni Morrison also has characters who have multiple personality, according to Diana Kindron’s “Deacon Morgan and Multiple Personality Disorder in Toni Morrison’s Paradise” (http://voices.yahoo.com/deacon-morgan-multiple-personality-disorder-in-256432.html?cat=72) (2007), although most reviews of Paradise (1997) make no mention of it.

One of the main things that gives credibility to the multiple personality of King’s novelist character is that the novelist hears several distinctive, rational voices in his head. Hearing such voices is not a well-known feature of stereotypical multiple personality, but it does happen to be clinically realistic. These voices would be from several hidden personalities, speaking from behind the scenes. However, judging from the text, it is not clear that King, himself, realized that these would be voices of other personalities, and not just the thoughts of the regular personality. So he probably did not learn about voices in multiple personality from reading a textbook. Yet, he is somehow familiar enough with the mind of a person with multiple personality to include these realistic details.

Do King and Morrison write such characters because multiple personality is an easy gimmick? No. Writing credible characters with multiple personality is not easy. So there must be another reason.

King and Morrison, like Dickens, write such characters, because, apparently, they know multiple personality, and write what they know.