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.