Times Book Review “The Dark Side” by Walter Kirn, on Daniel Levine’s Hyde, Ignores Multiple Personality, Wrongly Credits Freudian Psychology

In tomorrow’s New York Times, Walter Kirn begins his review by saying that Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is “an allegory of the divided self” and that Stevenson “dramatizes human duality.” But Kirn does not mention multiple personality, per se.

Kirn then says that Daniel Levine’s Hyde tells the Jekyll-Hyde story from the perspective of Hyde who is: “the unconscious mind personified,” “an outlet for Jekyll’s buried lusts, a manifestation of his banished id,” “an integral, abiding second self who first emerged during Jekyll’s painful childhood as a defense against severe abuse,” some of it “clearly sexual” by a “sadistic father.” He says that this is “Freudian psychology.”

Kirn makes the following mistakes, all of which are common in book reviews. First, he doesn't mention multiple personality, per se, because he fails to recognize that the story involves multiple personality, per se. Second, he contradicts himself by saying that Hyde has been quite conscious since childhood—“able to observe the doctor’s deeds and draw inferences from his behavior”—but says that Hyde represents “the unconscious mind.” Third, he mistakenly credits Freud with explaining such cases. The fact is, Freudian psychology posits an unconscious, but these cases involve alternate personalities who are quite conscious. Thus, Freudian psychology cannot explain how any such case could ever exist, and classic Freudians usually miss the diagnosis.

Whenever one reviews stories that involve “the divided self,” “human duality,” or any version of “Jekyll-Hyde,” it is a mistake to invoke Freudian psychology or to use psychoanalytic literary theory.

The relevant perspective is Multiple Identity Literary Theory.