Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night: His Mother’s Multiple Personality

The main characters, based on the author and his family, are the mother, 54, a morphine addict; the father, 65, an alcoholic, and former matinee idol; the older son, 33, an alcoholic; and the younger son, 23, an alcoholic who aspires to be a writer. The mother has been previously hospitalized for strange behavior attributed to her drug addiction. The play describes a day in which she relapses.

Father and sons (and apparently the doctors) have presumed that the mother’s strange behavior is drug-induced, since the behavior is said to have started 23 years ago when she was given morphine for obstetric pain, and because it is thought to happen only when she abuses morphine.

Had she had such behavior even before taking morphine? Since childhood? Does the drug only make the strange behavior more conspicuous by tranquilizing her host personality and making it easer for her other personalities to come out? These questions, of course, were never asked.

Her behavior is often referred to as “strange.” This may be meant as a euphemism for crazy, but the fact is, that although her behavior is strange, it is not irrational. Each thing she says—however odd, out-of-character, anachronistic, inappropriate, and self-contradictory—is, in and of itself, rational.

Her switches from one personality to another are described, for example, in Act Three:

“There is at times an uncanny gay, free youthfulness in her manner, as if in spirit she were released to become again, simply and without self-consciousness, the naive, happy, chattering schoolgirl of her convent days.”

[This child-aged alternate personality is oriented to a time in the past, and is not “out” or involved in such current events as the filling of a prescription for morphine, which another personality and her maid had done that day.]

Maid—The way the man in the drugstore acted when I took in the prescription for you [the mother was waiting outside in the car]. The impidence of him!

Mother—(with stubborn blankness) What are you talking about? What drugstore? What prescription?

[The child-age personality has amnesia for the period of time that the prescription was filled. As the conversation proceeds, the mother switches back and forth between child-aged and present-oriented personalities, which is confusing to the maid, who suspects the mother has taken some of the medicine, and that it’s making her “act funny.”]

Mother—(dreamily) It kills the pain. You go back until at last you are beyond its reach. Only the past when you were happy is real. (She pauses—then as if her words had been an evocation which called back happiness she changes in her whole manner and facial expression. She looks younger. There is a quality of an innocent convent girl about her, and she smiles shyly.)

[Later in the conversation, when the mother says she’s not hungry…]

Maid—You ought to eat something, Ma’am. It’s a queer medicine if if takes away your appetite.

Mother—…What medicine? I don’t know what you mean. [She has switched back to the child-aged alter, who is not aware of taking drugs. Then…]

“She suddenly loses all the girlish quality and is an aging, cynically sad, embittered woman.”

Mother—(bitterly) You’re a sentimental fool…[Another personality is now speaking to the girlish personality, who had been telling how she fell in love with her future husband, a successful actor.] What is so wonderful about that first meeting between a silly romantic schoolgirl and a matinee idol? You were much happier before you knew he existed, in the Convent when you used to pray to the Blessed Virgin…You expect the Blessed Virgin to be fooled by a lying dope fiend reciting words!

[Is this personality a nun, or the personality now grown up from childhood who had wanted to become a nun? In any case, this personality condemns both the personality who fell in love with the matinee idol and the other personality who is now a “dope fiend.” She hears the men returning to the house (probably from drinking), and says,]

Mother—Why are they coming back? They don’t want to. And I’d much rather be alone. (Suddenly her whole manner changes. She becomes pathetically relieved and eager.) Oh, I’m so glad they’ve come! I’ve been so horribly lonely!

Clearly, what is “strange” and confusing about the mother’s behavior is the way she keeps switching from one personality to another. And it is highly likely that this has been going on—but less conspicuously—since childhood, when she had one personality who wanted to be a nun, one who wanted to be a concert pianist, one who fell in love with a matinee idol, etc.

In any case, neither morphine nor any other drug causes (or cures) multiple personality. However, almost any drug or substance can affect one alternate personality (alter) more than another, and by doing so, affect the balance of power among alters, so that alters who would ordinarily remain behind the scenes, come out on the stage and thrust themselves into the action, which can be strange and confusing.

Eugene O’Neill. Complete Plays 1932-1943. The Library of America, 1988.