The Inconsistencies of Henry James’s "The Turn of the Screw" are Explained by Multiple Narrators (Multiple Personality; Dissociative Identity) and Multiple Identity Literary Theory

This famous short story has the beautiful sentences and brilliant observations for which Henry James is justly famous. Its use of language is another lesson of the master. So readers tend to make excuses for the story’s blatant inconsistencies (not ambiguity, inconsistencies).

What inconsistencies? Take, for example, the first six pages of the story, which sets up the situation: The narrator is attending a social gathering in which people are telling ghost stories, and one gentleman decides to read a first-person account written down by a governess many years ago. The rest is the governess’s story. The thing is, the six-page set-up is never mentioned again. And there is simply no good reason to use the first six pages of a short story for a set-up that is totally abandoned. It’s like the beginning and end of the story were written by two different people.

Then there is the inconsistency in characterization of the two young children, Flora and Miles, who are under the governess’s care. For most of the story, these children are described—over and over again—as exceptionally beautiful innocents. Yet, toward the end of the story, young Miles is portrayed as a willful, wily, calculating schemer; perhaps, you might rationalize, because Miles is possessed by the evil spirit that the governess has been seeing. But then Miles dies of fright like he is the innocent again. Was Miles a beautiful innocent or an ugly schemer? Was the governess hallucinating? The narrative is not simply ambiguous; it actively takes both sides of these issues.

Of course, a bright reader can rationalize these inconsistencies, or can say that, after all, James is known for his “ambiguity.” But if the story had not been written so beautifully by the brilliant Henry James, its unresolved inconsistencies would be considered amateurish mistakes.

So why would a great writer like Henry James produce such an incoherent narrative? The answer is that the story was written by more than one narrative voice. One narrator wanted the six-page set-up. Another narrator didn’t. One narrator sees children as beautiful innocents. Another narrator sees children as devilish schemers. One narrator thinks that the governess saw real ghosts. Another narrator thinks that’s nonsense. I don’t know how many narrators wrote this story, but its unresolved inconsistencies are the footprints of these narrators, and they are walking in different directions.

Readers of this blog can guess that by multiple narrators, I mean the normal multiple personality (dissociative identity) common among writers. This interpretation of The Turn of the Screw illustrates the use of Multiple Identity Literary Theory.

Without this theory to understand James, he is vulnerable to a much harsher critique. In fact, Jamesian scholars, with a book load of facts and analysis (1), accuse James of pervasive and serial duplicity, both moral (deceit) and literary (doubling), in both fiction and nonfiction. And they can’t explain it. 

1. Tredy D, Duperray A, Harding A (eds.): Henry James and the Poetics of Duplicity. Newcastle upon Tyne, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013

Pen Names, Pseudonyms, and Multiple Personality (Dissociative Identity; Multiple Identity)

Ordinary nicknames are used to indicate the nature and closeness of a relationship; they are not about the person’s having distinctly different identities (with different self-image, behavior, mood, styles, values, and/or interests). In contrast, the names of alternate personalities indicate which identity (with its own self-image, behavior, mood, styles, values, and/or interests) you are talking about or talking to.

Pen names and pseudonyms are often claimed to serve no other purposes than to protect privacy, to have a different brand name for different genres, or to fool reviewers. But the real reason for their use may be that the writer has a non-writing identity and a writing identity, has more than one writing identity who wants to publish, and/or has different groups of character identities who are suitable for different genres.

J. M. Barrie (Peter Pan) and George du Maurier (Svengali): Two More Writers With Multiple Personality (Dissociative Identity; Multiple Identity)

J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan is a multiple personality scenario, because it is about Peter and the lost boys who never grow up. In multiple personality, one of the most common types of alternate personality (alter) is the child-aged alter. Child-aged alters are child-aged, because they never grow up.

So I was not surprised to find that Barrie said he had an alternate personality who did his writing, named McConnachie, as reported in the New York Times of May 21, 1922. Google “JM Barrie McConnachie” to find the article.

According to Piers Dudgeon’s Neverland: J. M. Barrie, the du Mauriers, and the Dark Side of Peter Pan (New York, Pegasus Books, 2009), George du Maurier—author of Peter Ibbetson and Trilby, two best sellers, the latter with the famous character, Svengali; grandfather of novelist, Daphne du Maurier—“used to feel within himself two persons, the one serious, energetic, full of honest ambition and good purpose; the other a wastrel, reckless and careless, easily driven to the Devil.”

Perhaps related to also having a child-aged alter, George du Maurier had a psychological technique that he called "dreaming true." “ ‘Dreaming true’ was [George du Maurier’s] little secret. My grandpapa George developed the ability to ‘visit’ the past by dreaming true,” wrote Daphne. “He would lie back and in his mind’s eye become the child he once was, and he wrote about this ‘psychic’ ability too, in Peter Ibbetson.” Perhaps Daphne, herself, had been using a similar technique, when she wrote the opening line of her novel, Rebecca, “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.”

“Dreaming true” is not the same as “lucid dreaming.” The latter refers to dreaming in which the dreamer knows he is dreaming and can direct the action of the dream. In contrast, George du Maurier describes dreaming true as being like reality, and not like dreams, in that you can’t fly or jump off cliffs, etc. In Peter Ibbetson, he describes it as a way to visit his true, actual past. Ibbetson could “turn myself into my old self, and thus be touched and caressed by those I had so loved.” Dreaming true sounds like a version of self-hypnotic age-regression. I think it's possible that hypnotic age regression involves switching to a child-age alter.

As literary tidbits, I may mention that J. M. Barrie named Peter Pan after George du Maurier’s Peter Ibbetson. Ibbetson’s “never never land” became Neverland in Peter Pan. Barrie even bought a St. Bernard dog and called him Porthos after Peter Ibbetson’s dog. It is also surprising to learn that an early title for Peter Pan had been “The Boy Who Hated Mothers.” And the character Peter Pan had been originally intended to be “a demon boy, villain of the story.”

In any case, and in short, J. M. Barrie and George du Maurier are two more famous writers with issues of multiple personality and dissociative identity.

Joseph Conrad’s “The Secret Sharer”: A Short Story About the Use of Multiple Personality (Dissociative Identity) To Write Fiction

The story is narrated in the first person by a young ship’s captain, who, having just taken command of a new ship (a blank page), is at sea. The captain (writer) is suddenly confronted with a man (a character) who seems to come out of nowhere (having fled another ship after killing someone). The captain hides the man in his cabin until the ship nears an island where the fugitive character can live after the story is over.

Once the character introduces himself (“My name is Leggatt”), he is never again referred to by name. Instead, the captain refers to him—over and over again, throughout the story—as follows: “It was…as though I had been faced by my own reflection in…a…mirror,” “my double,” “my double,” “my double,” “ghost,” “my double,” “other self,” “my double,” “my other self,” “my double,” “my secret self,” “a ghost,” “my double,” “my second self,” “my second self,” “my double,” “my secret double,” “my second self,” “my second self,” “my very own self,” “my double,” “my second self,” “the secret stranger,” “my other self,” and “my second self.” 

If the story had been primarily about a fugitive who is given a second chance, it would not have been titled “The Secret Sharer.” The story is about a writer, just starting out on a new writing voyage, who suddenly meets a character. And the character, we are repeatedly and endlessly told, is actually another personality state of the writer. That is, the writer has, and uses, multiple personality to create the narrative.

To refer to a person who has multiple personality as a “secret sharer” is very appropriate, since multiple personality is, normally, hidden and secret. Conrad’s insight is that fiction writers, in their use of multiple personality to write fiction, are secret sharers.

DSM-5 Says Multiple Personality (Dissociative Identity) is More Common Than Schizophrenia

American Psychiatric Association: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition. Arlington VA, American Psychiatric Association, 2013.

Prevalence (in the general population)

Schizophrenia: 0.3%—0.7%

Dissociative Identity Disorder: 1.5%

Multiple personality is two to five times as common as schizophrenia.

So why is it, then, that schizophrenia is a common diagnosis by most psychiatrists, but that most psychiatrists (and other mental health professionals) go through their whole professional lives without ever diagnosing multiple personality, leading most psychiatrists (and others) to think that multiple personality is rare, and leading some psychiatrists (and others), including some of the most eminent, to think that multiple personality is “bunk”?

I answered that question in the first post of this blog (June 2013). In short, multiple personality is a condition that is designed to keep secrets, and to keep itself secret—it becomes obvious only after diagnosis, when the cat is out of the bag, so to speak—and most mental health professionals have never been taught how to make the diagnosis.

Freud Had Multiple Personality (Dissociative Identity)

The “confession”

In his May 14, 1922 letter to Arthur Schnitzler (a Viennese physician who had become an eminent playwright), Sigmund Freud wrote:

“I shall make you a confession…which you will kindly…keep to yourself and not share with either friend or stranger. I have been struggling with the question of why I have never, in all these years, made any effort to meet you…The answer to this question contains what appears to me as too intimate a confession. I think I have avoided you out of a kind of fear of finding my own double [Doppelgänger Scheu]” (1).

The German word for a person’s double, doppelgänger, has eerie, supernatural connotations (1), and Freud, in his article on the “uncanny,” had described a double as being “a thing of terror” (4). Moreover, as long as twenty years earlier, on his way to Naples in 1902, Freud, after reporting that he had met his double—it is not clear to what or to whom he was then referring as his double—commented, “Does this signify Verdere Napoli e poi morire [See Naples and die]?” (2, vol. 2, p. 21). In short, for many years of his life, and seriously enough to involve phobic avoidance of meeting someone and remarks about death, Freud was worried that he might have a second self, a double. The question, of course, is why he would have a worry like that.

Further along in his letter to Schnitzler, Freud tried to rationalize his fear that the playwright might be his double by arguing that there was an “uncanny” similarity between his own psychology and that which he perceived in Schnitzler’s plays. Others have argued that there was a remarkable similarity between the two men’s lives (1); or that Freud’s thinking of several literary figures as showing signs of possibly being his double—it was a preoccupation with having a double, not a fixation on Schnitzler—was a defense “against accepting responsibility for creative inspirations” (5); or that Freud was “narcissistic” (6). But neither similarities nor defenses nor narcissism can explain why Freud thought that Schnitzler or anyone else had even the remotest possibility of being his double, because, after all, there is no such thing in real life.

A double is only a figure of speech. It is a literary concretization and embodiment of what, clinically, would be a second self in a case of dual personality (7, p. 162). In double stories, the primary character is paired with his or her double character—who may be portrayed as a separate person, or as a reversible transformation of the primary character, or as a hallucination or specter, or as any kind of materialized alter ego that the author can imagine—either as a way of dramatizing the primary character’s psychological and moral conflicts or simply as an entertaining plot device. An example is Poe’s classic tale, “William Wilson” (8), which reaches a climax when the depraved Mr. Wilson attempts to stab to death his infuriatingly ethical double, only to find himself bleeding to death of self-inflicted wounds as he belatedly becomes aware of the large mirror opposite him.

In a footnote to an article in which he takes up the subject of the double, Freud relates the following personal experience:

“I was sitting alone in my wagon-lit compartment when a more than usually violent jolt of the train swung back the door of the adjoining washing-cabinet, and an elderly gentleman in a dressing-gown and a travelling cap came in. I assumed that in leaving the washing-cabinet, which lay between the two compartments, he had taken the wrong direction and come into my compartment by mistake. Jumping up with the intention of putting him right, I at once realized to my dismay that the intruder was nothing but my own reflection in the looking-glass on the open door. I can still recollect that I thoroughly disliked his appearance” (4).

This kind of mirror double is an item that appears on two dissociative experience rating scales: “Some people have the experience of looking in a mirror and not recognizing themselves” (9). “I have found myself staring intently at myself in the mirror as though looking at a stranger” (10). The people who score the highest on these scales are those with multiple personality.

Thus, our first clue as to what kind of experiences could have predisposed Freud to think in terms of having a double was a dissociative experience. (Multiple personality—aka dissociative identity—is a dissociative disorder.) But it was not the kind of dissociative experience that would have made Freud think that he might actually have a double walking the earth. What kind of experience might have made him think that?

Freud must have been accused of doing things that he couldn’t recall doing, leading him to suspect that there must be someone who could be mistaken for him—a double—who was responsible. That Freud was worried about having a double for many years, suggests that, over the years, he had had multiple episodes of being accused of doing things that, as far as he knew, he hadn’t done.

Moreover, the fact that he didn’t think he might have done what he was accused of, but had forgotten it, indicates that, if he had had amnesia for doing things, he also had amnesia for his amnesia; that is, he was not aware of having had memory gaps for the periods of time he was supposed to have done things. Possibly the closest Freud ever came to realizing that he could dissociate completely was the time he recognized that he had had “odd states of mind not intelligible to consciousness” (11). Most often, his awareness of having had an episode of amnesia would be limited to a vague sense that time had passed like a “confused dream” (see below).

Amnesia

A famous example of Freud’s having been accused of something that he couldn’t recall was the allegation that he had been exposed to the ideas of Pierre Janet during the time that Freud was in Paris—October 1885 to February 1886—to study under the great neurologist and medical hypnotist, Jean-Martin Charcot.

This charge was so distressing to Freud that even many years later, when he was eighty years old, and Janet (three years younger) inquired if he could make a courtesy call, Freud refused to see him. “No, I will not see Janet,” Freud said. “I could not refrain from reproaching him with having behaved unfairly to psychoanalysis and also to me personally and having never corrected it. He was stupid enough to say that the idea of a sexual etiology for the neuroses could only arise in the atmosphere of a town like Vienna. Then when the libel was spread by French writers that I had listened to his lectures and stolen his ideas he could with a word have put an end to such talk, since I actually never saw him or heard his name in the Charcot time…” (2, vol. 3 pp. 213-214).

Freud was consistent and insistent on the latter point, as can be seen in a private letter (12) and in his autobiography, where he said, “I should therefore like to say explicitly that during the whole of my visit to the Salpetriere Janet’s name was never so much as mentioned” (13). That this was not just a distortion of memory that came after his bitter rivalry with Janet had developed, is indicated by the fact that Janet’s name appears neither in Freud’s contemporaneous report on his Paris studies (14) nor, apparently, in any of his letters from that time. So, if, despite Freud’s version, Janet actually had been a factor on the Paris scene during the time Freud was there, then that fact would have had to have registered in a dissociated part of Freud’s mind, since his regular frame of mind would seem to have had no knowledge of it.

The fact is, a paper written by Pierre Janet was read at a meeting of the Societe de Psychologie Physiologique in Paris on November 30, 1885 (7, p. 338; 15). Although it is not certain that Janet himself was present at the reading of his paper (7), and I have no documentation of Freud’s attendance, there are three reasons to think that Freud would have attended. First, the meeting was chaired by Charcot, whom Freud had gone to Paris to study under, and in honor of whom Freud was later to name his first son. Second, the general subject of the paper was hypnosis, one of the main things that Freud had gone to Paris to learn more about, and a subject that remained one of his chief interests for several years. Third, the specific subject of the paper was Janet’s experiment about whether it was possible to exert hypnotic influence from a great distance; that is, telepathically.

How personally interesting this lecture would have been to Freud at that time can be seen from the the following. Freud wrote, “During the days when I was living alone in a foreign city [Paris]—I was a young man at the time [29 years old]—I quite often heard my name suddenly called by an unmistakable and beloved voice; I then noted down the exact moment of the hallucination and made anxious enquiries of those at home about what had happened at that time. Nothing had happened…I must however confess that in the last few years [the early 1920s] I have had a few remarkable experiences which might easily have been explained on the hypothesis of telepathic thought-transference” (16). For these reasons, then, the burden of proof is on anyone who would contend that Freud didn’t attend the reading of Janet’s paper, or that Freud never even heard Janet’s name mentioned during the Charcot time.

In a December 3, 1885 letter from Paris, Freud makes certain remarks that seem to be merely “waxing very poetical” (17) in the context of the letter alone, but which take on additional meaning in the context of his use, in later years, of the word “uncanny” to talk about doubles and Schnitzler (see above), and in the context of his evident dissociative amnesia for Janet’s November 30th lecture. Toward the beginning of the letter, he says Paris “and its inhabitants strike me as uncanny; the people seem to me of a different species from ourselves; I feel they are all possessed of a thousand demons.” And toward the end of the letter, he says that he wishes he were back with his loved ones, because “Paris is simply one long confused dream, and I shall be very glad to wake up” (17).

Freud’s experiences of amnesia were not limited by time or place. Fifteen years later (1900) and far from Paris, at the last meeting of his dying friendship with Wilhelm Fliess, Freud spoke of the theory of bisexuality as though he were proposing a new idea, when in fact, Fliess had proposed that idea to Freud back in 1897, and Freud had spoken of the importance of Fliess’s idea in correspondence of 1898 and 1899. Freud’s inability to recall the history of the idea—a week later, memory about it returned—was as Jones (Freud’s friend and authorized biographer) said, “A very severe case of amnesia!” (2, vol. 1, pp. 314-315). Another, and most ironic, example of amnesia, was Freud’s writing about dissociation itself (though he avoids calling it by its name) as something “entirely new” (18). Was this the same Freud who had once spoken of “splitting of the mind and dissociation of the personality” as having originally been at the center of his position (19)?

 “two different intellectual states in myself”

In his letter of March 2, 1899, Freud wrote: “I can very clearly distinguish two different intellectual states in myself. In the first I pay very careful attention to everything that my patients tell me and have new ideas during the work itself, but outside it [the therapeutic work] cannot think and can do no other work [while in this intellectual state]. In the other [intellectual state] I draw conclusions, make notes, have interest to spare for other things…” (22). This seems to be the private basis for one of Freud’s well-known recommendations for psychoanalytic technique; namely, that the analyst should initially listen to the patient with “evenly hovering attention” (2, vol. 2, p. 234) and not make interpretations or take notes.

But why is it that Freud “cannot think and can do no other work” (other than listen to his patients) while in the first of the two states? Is psychoanalytic treatment the only situation in which intuitive, noncritical attention can be employed? Hardly. So Freud is not describing a mere attitude or mode of attention (which could be employed at will and in a variety of situations), but a distinct and independent frame of mind that has somehow developed its own style and mission.

And consider Freud’s image of “evenly hovering attention”: That is the point of view frequently described by people undergoing trauma (e.g., rape, surgery, a near-death experience), when a dissociated ego state seems to be observing the situation from above. If we now juxtapose Freud’s first intellectual state with its “evenly-hovering attention,” it suggests that that personality state originated in a traumatic situation, such as being a captive audience for the primal scene. If Freud repeatedly witnessed parental intercourse due to his family’s occupying a single room during his first few years (6), then while little Sigmund lay in bed, wishing to dissociate himself from the disturbing event, a less judgmental ego state may have split off and hovered over the prima scene. Many years later, this same intellectual state may have hovered over his patients as they lay on the couch recalling their own traumatic experiences.

Two of Freud’s selves astonish each other

In 1936, Freud wrote: “You know that the aim of my scientific work was to throw light upon unusual, abnormal or pathological manifestations of the mind…During the last few years, a phenomenon of this sort, which I myself experienced a generation ago, in 1904, and which I had never understood, has kept on recurring to my mind.”

He described his actual experience as follows: “When finally…I stood on the Acropolis and cast my eyes around upon the landscape, a surprising thought suddenly entered my mind: ‘So all this really does exist, just as we learnt at school!’ To describe the situation more accurately, the person who gave expression to the remark was divided, far more sharply than was usually noticeable, from another person who took cognizance of the remark; and both were astonished, though not by the same thing. The first behaved as though he were obliged, under the impact of an unequivocal observation, to believe in something the reality of which had hitherto seemed doubtful…The second person, on the other hand, was justifiably astonished, because he had been unaware that the real existence of Athens, the Acropolis, and the landscape around it had ever been objects of doubt…” (21).

Freud began to analyze his experience in terms of depersonalization, a subject, he said, that “leads us on to the extraordinary condition of ‘double conscience’ [dual consciousness], which is more correctly described as ‘split personality’. But all of this is so obscure and has been so little mastered scientifically that I must refrain form talking about it any more to you” (21). And so he leaves the shadows of dissociation (where the issue is) to look for the key under the Oedipal lamppost (where it is easier for him to see).

Freud’s abandonment of dissociation

As Freud had once acknowledged, the original cornerstone of psychoanalysis had been dissociation: “It was [Charcot’s] pupil, Pierre Janet, who first attempted a deeper approach to the peculiar psychical processes present in hysteria, and [Breurer and I] followed his example when we took the splitting of the mind and dissociation of the personality as the centre of our position” (19).

So why didn’t the center hold? First, because Janet had gotten there first, and if Freud were to establish himself as the father of the true psychoanalysis, he would have to abandon Janet’s dissociation in favor of his own defense mechanism of repression. Both Janet and Freud accepted the fact that people could have things in their mind that they weren’t aware of. This had been discovered, and was well known, long before either Janet or Freud had been born; it had been clearly demonstrated by hypnosis. But in Freud’s theory, a person was not aware of something because it was repressed into the “unconscious.” While in Janet’s dissociation, the regular consciousness became unaware of something, not because it was unconscious, but because it was dissociated into an alternate consciousness. This is most clearly seen in cases of multiple personality.

Whose view, Janet’s or Freud’s, has stood the test of time? Suffice it to say that since 1980, the official psychiatric diagnostic manual (the DSM) has had a chapter on dissociative disorders, but no chapter on repression disorders.

Why did Freud take the wrong road? Not only because he wanted to establish himself as father of his own school of psychoanalysis. But because he, himself, had dissociative symptoms, probably even multiple personality. And he had trouble with mirrors.

REFERENCES

1. Kupper HI, Rollman-Branch HS: Freud and Schnitzler—(Doppelganger). J Am Psychoanal Assoc 1959; 7:109-126

2. Jones E: The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, 3 vols. New York, Basic Books, 1953-57

3. [reference used in previous version omitted]

4. Freud S: The ‘Uncanny’ (1919), Complete Psychological Works, standard ed, vol 17. London, Hogarth Press, 1955

5. Kanzer M: Freud and his literary doubles (1976), in Freud and His Self-Analysis. Edited by Kanzer M, Glenn J. New York, Jason Aronson, 1979

6. Glenn J: Narcissistic aspects of Freud and his doubles, Freud and His Self-Analysis. Edited by Kanzer M, Glenn J. New York, Jason Aronson, 1979

7. Ellenberger HF: The Discovery of the Unconscious. New York, Basic Books, 1970

8. Poe EA: William Wilson (1839), in The Annotated Tales of Edgar Allan Poe. Edited by Peithman S. New York, Avenel Books, 1986

9. Bernstein EM, Putnam FW: Development, reliability, and validity of a dissociation scale. J Nerv Meant Dis 1986; 174:727-735

10. Riley KC: Measurement of dissociation. J Nerv Ment Dis 1988; 176;449-450

11. Freud S: Letter 65 (1897), in The Origins of Psycho-Analysis: Letters to Wilhelm Fliess. Edited by Bonaparte M, Freud A, Kris E. Translated by Mosbacher E, Strachey J. New York, Basis Books, 1954

12. Bennet EA: The Freud-Janet controversy: an unpublished letter. Brit Med J 1965; 2 Jan:52-53

13. Freud S: An autobiographical study (1925), in Complete Psychological Works, standard ed, vol 20, p 13. London, Hogarth Press, 1959

14. Freud S: Report on my studies in Paris and Berlin (1886), Complete Psychological Works, standard ed, vol 1. London Hogarth Press, 1959

15. Kopell BS: Pierre Janet’s description of hypnotic sleep provoked from a distance. J Hist Behav Sci 1968; 4:119-131

16. Freud S: The psychopathology of everyday life (1901 and later editions), in Complete Psychological Works, standard ed, vol 6. London, Hogarth Press, 1960, p. 261

17. Freud S: Letter 87, in Letters of Sigmund Freud. Edited by Freud EL. Translated by Stern T, Stern J. New York, Basic Books, 1975

18. Freud S: Splitting of the ego in the process of defence (1940), in Complete Psychological Works, standard ed, vol 23. London, Hogarth Press, 1964

19. Freud S: Second Lecture of five lectures on psycho-analysis (1910), in Complete Psychological Works, standard ed, vol 11. London, Hogarth Press, 1957

20. Freud S: Letter 106, in The Origins of Psycho-Analysis: Letters to Wilhelm Fliess. Edited by Bonaparte M, Freud A, Kris E. Translated by Mosbacher E, Strachey J. New York, Basic Books, 1954

21. Freud S: A disturbance of memory on the acropolis (1936), in Complete Psychological Works, standard ed, vol 22. London, Hogarth Press, 1964

22. Freud S: Letter 70, the The Origins of Psycho-Analysis: Letters to Wilhelm Fliess. Edited by Bonaparte M, Freud A, Kris E. Translated by Mosbacher E, Strachey J. New York, Basic Books, 1954

Multiple Identity Literary Theory

Multiple identity, in one form or another, is pervasive in fiction writing; for example, literary alter egos, twin or double characters, character splitting, ghosts (in Margaret Atwood’s words, “the Henry James kind”), possession, characters with multiple personality—much more common in novels than people realize; it is often unacknowledged by the writer and most reviewers—multiple narrators, multiple voices or implied authors, and so forth. What do all these literary features have in common, other than their multiple identity? They are written by writers who are inclined to write that way.

Multiple Identity Literary Theory says that multiple identity is surprisingly common in fiction, because most fiction writers have “normal multiple personality” or “normal dissociative identity” or “normal multiple identity” (use whichever wording you prefer). Normal multiple personality is integral to the process by which most novelists create and relate to their characters and stories.

What makes “normal multiple personality” normal? It doesn’t cause distress or dysfunction. And it is surprisingly common among the general public; for example, according to surveys, many people speak with their guardian angels, just like novelists speak with their characters. “It’s a Wonderful Life,” as the 1946 classic film says.

Why isn’t this already covered by psychoanalytic literary theory? Because classic Freudian theory cannot account for the existence of multiple personality (see June 2013 post), leading Freud and most of his followers to miss the diagnosis and ignore the issue.

What about other kinds of multiple identity? Many people are multilingual, multiracial, multiethnic, multinational, multi-gender, etc. Don’t these other types of multiplicity contribute to the multiple identity in writers and their writings? Probably. And I don’t object to including them in Multiple Identity Literary Theory. But these other forms of multiple identity are not present in many writers, and the normal multiple personality of writers remains the most important factor in making multiple identity so pervasive in fiction writing.

NOTE (added April 9, 2014): This post is an incomplete description of Multiple Identity Literary Theory. The blog as a whole is a statement of the theory. New details and aspects of the theory are added with each post. But the essence of the theory is that novelists have and use multiple personality to write novels, and that multiple personality is much more common than people realize: my guess is 90% of novelists and 30% of the general public.

Margaret Atwood, Henry James, Charles Dickens, Ghosts, and Multiple Personality (Dissociative Identity)

“You want to talk about ghost stories?” said Margaret Atwood in a 1972 interview.“…There are several kinds of ghosts…you can have the Henry James kind, in which the ghost that one sees is in fact a fragment of one’s own self which has split off, and that to me is the most interesting kind and that is obviously the tradition I’m working in.”

Henry James wrote ten ghost stories, including “The Jolly Corner,” “The Turn of the Screw,” and “The Private Life.” In “The Jolly Corner,” the protagonist visits his childhood home and meets a ghost of himself as he might have been if he had taken a different road in life. But that’s just fiction, right?

In real life, does anyone ever see a “ghost” that is really an alternate self, because the person has a split personality? Yes, people with multiple personality, like Dickens, sometimes do. As quoted in the first chapter of Forster’s biography, Dickens tells about when he was once on his way to Canterbury, was nearing the house called Gadshill-place, and he thought he saw, standing by the road, a strange young boy:

“Holloa!” said I [Dickens], to the very queer small boy, “where do you live?”

“At Chatham,” says he.

“What do you do there?” says I.

“I go to school,” says he.

      I took him up [into his carriage] in a moment, and we went on [Dickens recalls]. Presently, the very queer small boy says, “This is Gads-hill we are coming to, where Falstaff went out to rob those travellers, and ran away.”

“You know something about Falstaff, eh?” said I.

“All about him,” said the very queer small boy. “I am old (I am nine), and I read all sorts of books. But do let us stop at the top of the hill, and look at the house there, if you please!”

“You admire that house?” said I.

“Bless you, sir,” said the very queer small boy, “when I was not more than half as old as nine, it used to be a treat for me to be brought to look at it. And now I am nine, I come by myself to look at it. And ever since I can recollect, my father, seeing me so fond of it, has often said to me, If you were to be very persevering and were to work hard, you might some day come to live in it. Though that’s impossible!” said the very queer small boy, drawing a low breath, and now staring at the house out of window with all his might.

      I was rather amazed to be told this by the very queer small boy [Dickens recalls]; for that house happens to be my house, and I have reason to believe that what he said was true.

Thus, Dickens, in real life, conversed with a “ghost,” which was actually a child-aged alternate personality. This doesn’t surprise me. Child-aged alters (alternate personalities) are one of the most common kinds, because multiple personality starts in childhood. And people with multiple personality do sometimes converse with their alters like Dickens did (which is similar to the way many novelists talk with their characters). In terms of his writing, his child-aged alters may have helped Dickens’s write certain things from a child’s perspective. And since Dickens saw “ghosts,” it is not surprising that one of his most famous and beloved works, “A Christmas Carol,” is a ghost story.

Henry James’s “The Turn of the Screw” is also a ghost story. It is often debated whether they are supposed to be real ghosts or only a figment of the character’s imagination. But my question would be why James was writing ghost stories in the first place. Did James, like Dickens, have multiple personality and see “ghosts”?

James’s “The Private Life” is a short story about a writer with multiple personality, but James writes it as a ghost story. In James’s own commentary on the story, he wanted to make sure we didn’t think it was about him, so he explained that he wrote the story because he had observed that another writer’s unexceptional public personality was so inconsistent with that writer’s works of genius that he must have had a ghost writer. You judge for yourself whether that sounds like a rationalization.