Paula Hawkins The Girl on the Train: Did Rachel have Alcoholic Blackouts or Multiple Personality Memory Gaps for the periods of time that she was drunk?

Alcoholic Blackouts

Alcoholic Blackouts are categorized as either complete or partial. If Rachel had blackouts, she had the complete kind, because the next day she would remember nothing at all of the period of time she had been drunk.

In complete blackouts, the alcohol’s toxic effect on the brain prevents any memories from being recorded, so there are no memories to remember, either the next day or at any later date.

The person may infer or guess what happened during the blackout period, from memories of the time before and after the blackout period, and from circumstantial evidence, such as physical injuries or what other people have said, but they have no direct memory of the blackout period.

Multiple Personality Memory Gaps

When the person was drunk, the regular, non-drinking personalities were not in control of behavior and consciousness, and so had no memories for that period of time. And when the regular personalities resumed control (afterwards and the next day), all they had was a memory gap for the period of time in question.

However, the drinking personalities did have complete memories for that period of time. And since the memories had been recorded (in the memory banks of the drinking personalities), it would be possible for the regular, non-drinking personalities to eventually get those memories, if the drinking personalities were ever willing to share them, and if the regular personalities were ever willing to listen.

Rachel (the main character)

Rachel says, “for four years I’d had problems with alcohol… ‘I don’t remember things…I black out and I can’t remember where I’ve been or what I’ve done,’ " (1, p. 189).

Rachel describes “the person I am when I drink. Drunk Rachel sees no consequences, she is either excessively expansive and optimistic or wrapped up in hate. She has no past, no future. She exists purely in the moment” (1, p. 105). This is what Regular Rachel has inferred from what others have told her about how she behaves when she is drunk. It is unclear whether there are two different drinking personalities, or one that is more rounded. In either case, Drunk Rachel is not just some physiological state of disinhibition. She has personality. But she is still only an alternate personality with limited perspective (not a total person, which would mean all her alternate personalities put together and taken as a whole).

Eventually, (Non-Drinking) Rachel does remember what she had previously not remembered: “She got into the car with him. That night. I saw her. I didn’t remember it…But I remember. I remember now” (1, p. 282).

If it had been an alcoholic blackout, there would have been no memory to remember.

In short, posing as a novel of alcoholic blackouts, this is actually a novel of multiple personality memory gaps.

1. Paula Hawkins. The Girl on the Train. New York, Riverhead Books of Penguin Group, 2015.