Patricia Highsmith’s Proclivity for Multiple Personality is Reported in Andrew Wilson’s Biography

“ ‘The individual has manifold shadows, all of which resemble him, and from time to time have equal claim to be the man himself’—Kierkegaard quoted in Highsmith’s 1949 journal…Highsmith herself, a writer fascinated by the concept of split identity” (1, p. 1).

“…her work explores the motif of the double or splintered self. The changeable nature of identity fascinated her both philosophically and personally” (1, p. 7).

“I am a…boy in a girl’s body” (1, p. 46).

“When she came in contact with people, she realised she split herself into many different, false, identities…” (1, p. 119).

“Highsmith revealed that in order to write she often deliberately thought herself into a different frame of mind, by pretending she was not herself…‘I suppose it’s a measure of how professional one is, how quickly one can do this’" (1, p. 123).

“I am troubled by a sense of being several people…” (1, p. 134).

“The Talented Mr Ripley…was written at speed in 1954, taking only six months. ‘It felt like Ripley was writing it,’ she said later, ‘it just came out’…The story is a dark reworking of Henry James’ The Ambassadors (1, p. 191-192)…‘I often had the feeling Ripley was writing it and I was merely typing’”  (1, p. 199).

See the past post in this blog on the multiple personality in Henry James’s The Ambassadors.

1. Andrew Wilson. Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith. New York, Bloomsbury, 2003