Novelist Graham Greene’s Multiple Personality: His Alternate Personality “Hilary Trench” and the Teddy Bear he carried in his luggage

The diagnoses most commonly mentioned in regard to Graham Greene are depression, manic-depression (bipolar disorder), and alcohol abuse. And he certainly did get depressed and drink too much. But it is multiple personality, not depression or alcohol, that helps explain his literary genius.

Teddy Bear

“Greene’s image as a man’s man was simply another cover—perhaps his most convincing one…Anyone could figure that out from Greene’s attachment to his toy bear Ted. In the 1950’s, and later, Ted went to all kinds of fascinating places with Greene. They were even caught up in some shooting between Israeli and Egyptian troops during a visit to the Sinai desert. To comfort Ted in that frightening incident, Greene held him close…

“Long after he had left the nursery, Greene still felt the need to carry around a teddy bear. The tough-talking, hard-drinking adventurer, the expert on opium dens and brothels, had a toy animal in his luggage. Greene’s attachment to the bear is not a complete surprise. True to form, he left clues in his work…An early, obscure story called The Bear Fell Free (1935) is about a doomed young man and his good-luck charm, a teddy bear. In A Burnt-out Case a priest asks Querry whether he has a favorite prayer, and he replies that all his prayers are ‘for a brown teddy bear’ " (1, p. 59).

Of course, the biographer misinterprets the teddy bear. It does not mean that Greene is an unmanly weakling. What it does mean is that Greene has a child-aged alternate personality, which is common in multiple personality.

Hilary Trench

“Hilary Trench was…an imaginary companion who conveniently embodied for Greene all his dark moods. He sometimes used the name as a pseudonym—his poem ‘If You Were Dead’ first appeared under the name. Vivienne [his future wife] was one of the few people to whom he admitted that Hilary was like a second self. Whenever he went into a dark mood, it was Hilary who did the thinking for him. If he pushed things too far with Vivienne, he liked to blame it on Hilary. It was wicked Hilary who planted terrible ideas in his head and made him want to hurt other people. Hilary was his personal devil” (1, p. 95).

This illustrates how easy it is to confuse multiple personality with a mood disorder like depression or even with demon possession. And the biographer accuses Greene of almost everything other than actual demon possession. But he doesn’t recognize Greene’s multiple personality.

[Please search "Graham Greene" in this blog to see all four posts about him.]

1. Michael Sheldon. Graham Greene: The Enemy Within. New York, Random House, 1994.