J. R. R. Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings, probably had Multiple Personality

Multiple personality’s childhood onset explains why it has a child’s way of thinking: imaginary companions and imaginary worlds (paracosm). Any adult who has created imaginary characters and worlds—especially when richly detailed, ultra-romantic, and/or fantastic—is likely to have had multiple personality.

Since these fictional characters and worlds are experienced as having minds of their own and as having actually existed, the writer, as Dickens put it, subjectively feels that he “didn’t invent it” (see June 2013 post).

And as J. R. R. Tolkien said, “They arose in my mind as ‘given’ things…always I had the sense of recording what was already ‘there’, somewhere: not of ‘inventing’” (1, p. 100).

If Tolkien had multiple personality, it would not be surprising if his characters had it, too. At least one does: Smeagol-Gollum.

Now, a writer’s multiple personality may or may not extend beyond his writing and into his relations with real people. Was Tolkien’s multiple personality ever evident in real life? The following suggests that it was:

“During his undergraduate days Tolkien developed his childhood interest in painting and drawing and began to show some skill at it, chiefly in the sketching of landscapes. He also paid a great deal of attention to handwriting and calligraphy, and became accomplished in many styles of manuscript. This interest was a combination of his enthusiasm for words and his artist’s eye, but it also reflected his many-sided personality, for as someone who knew him during these years remarked (with only slight exaggeration): ‘He had a different style of handwriting for each of his friends’” (1, p. 65).

Writing in different handwritings (under circumstances in which there is no reason to suspect that a person is faking) is often indicative of multiple personality.

1. Carpenter, Humphrey. J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 2000. [First published in Great Britain by George Allen & Unwin, 1977.]