Scott Barry Kaufman, James C. Kaufman (Eds.) The Psychology of Creative Writing: None of 31 contributors cites “The Illusion of Independent Agency”

John Baer               Jane Piirto

Michael V. Barrios      Jonathan A. Plucker

Genevieve E. Chandler   Samaneh Pourjalali

James C. Kaufman        Steven R. Pritzker

Scott Barry Kaufman     Mark A. Runco

Adele Kohanyi           Sandra W. Russ

Aaron Kozbelt           R. Keith Sawyer

E. Thomas Lawson        Pat Schneider

Martin S. Lindauer      Janel D. Sexton

Todd Lubart             Dean Keith Simonton

David Jung McGarva      Jerome L. Singer

Sharon S. McKool        E. M. Skrzynecky

Daniel Nettle           Robert J. Sternberg

James W. Pennebaker     Ai-Girl Tan

Susan K. Perry          Grace R. Waitman

                        Thomas B. Ward

It is not just that none of these eminent scholars cited that specific article—“The Illusion of Independent Agency” (2) (and see earlier post today)—but that none of them discussed the kinds of things reported in that article; i.e., the kinds of things that fiction writers commonly say about how their mind works in their creative writing process.

Why do these 31 brilliant scholars have this blindspot? Probably because they have no theory or framework—like Multiple Identity Literary Theory (the theory of this blog)—within which “the illusion of independent agency” makes sense.

Indeed, the authors of the article I’m praising evidently did not fully appreciate that what they call “the illusion of independent agency” is the essence of multiple personality, and that what they found in 92% of fifty fiction writers is a normal version of that.

1. Scott Barry Kaufman, James C. Kaufman (Editors). The Psychology of Creative Writing. Cambridge University Press, 2009.

2. Marjorie Taylor, Sara D. Hodges, Adele Kohanyi. “The Illustion of Independent Agency: Do Adult Fiction Writers Experience Their Characters as Having Minds of Their Own?” Imagination, Cognition and Personality, Vol. 22(4) 361-380, 2002-2003.

http://imaginarycompanions.uoregon.edu/files/2014/07/TaylorHodgesKohanyi-130mpe0.pdf

http://socialcognitionlab.uoregon.edu/files/2013/03/Taylor-Hodges-Kohanyi_2003-2b6wdel.pdf

“The Illusion of Independent Agency” by Taylor, Hodges, Kohanyi: The best article ever published by psychologists on the psychology of creative writing

I first cited the article in my post of August 18, 2013:

The Illusion of Independent Agency: Do adult fiction writers experience their

characters as having minds of their own?

Marjorie Taylor, Sara D. Hodges, Adele Kohanyi

Imagination, Cognition and Personality, Vol 22(4) 361-380, 2002-2003

Yes, ninety-two percent of the fifty fiction writers did experience that. They interacted with, and heard the voices of, their characters. They provided dramatic examples of characters who not only composed their own life histories, but also attempted to take control of the plot away from the writer. Some of the characters were even experienced by the writers as “leaving the pages of the writers’ stories to inhabit the writers’ everyday worlds (e.g., wandering around the house).”

Of course, the article itself is much richer than the above blurb. And so here are two links to the complete, original article:

http://imaginarycompanions.uoregon.edu/files/2014/07/TaylorHodgesKohanyi-130mpe0.pdf

http://socialcognitionlab.uoregon.edu/files/2013/03/Taylor-Hodges-Kohanyi_2003-2b6wdel.pdf

This classic article, like this blog, is not just for psychologists, but for anyone interested in how fiction is actually written.

Multiple Personality—normal, nonclinical versions—in both adults and children: Implicit in American Psychiatric Association’s DSM-5 Diagnostic Criteria

Below, in the DSM-5 diagnostic criteria, I have put Criterion C and the Note of Criterion D in boldface.

These things are in the diagnostic criteria so that the clinician will not mistakenly make this diagnosis in adults and children who have multiple personality, but who have a normal version.

I encourage clinicians, when they are away from the office, to give some thought to normal multiple personality.

Diagnostic Criteria

A. Disruption of identity characterized by two or more distinct personality states, which may be described in some cultures as an experience of possession. The disruption in identity involves marked discontinuity in sense of self and sense of agency, accompanied by related alterations in affect, behavior, consciousness, memory, perception, cognition, and/or sensory-motor functioning. These signs and symptoms may be observed by others or reported by the individual.

B. Recurrent gaps in the recall of everyday events, important personal information, and/or traumatic events that are inconsistent with ordinary forgetting.

C. The symptoms cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.

D. The disturbance is not a normal part of a broadly accepted cultural or religious practice. Note: In children, the symptoms are not better explained by imaginary playmates or other fantasy play.

E. The symptoms are not attributable to the physiological effects of a substance (e.g., blackouts or chaotic behavior during alcohol intoxication) or another medical condition (e.g., complex partial seizures).

American Psychiatric Association: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition. Arlington, VA, American Psychiatric Association, 2013, p. 292.

Mythopoetic Function of Alternate Personalities: Illustrated by Famous Medium, Helene Smith, in Théodore Flournoy’s From India to the Planet Mars

How does the mind create fiction and myth? And how can we ever find out? Fiction writing is done in private. And even fiction writers, themselves, are not entirely sure how they do it, which suggests that it takes place in “the unconscious.”

What goes on in “the unconscious”? And why study mediums to find out? Because mediums make a public spectacle of what usually takes place in private and out of awareness. Mediums turn off their regular consciousness by going into a trance, allowing their “unconscious” to come out and have its say.

“The mythopoetic function…Its great explorer was Flournoy with his research on Helen Smith and other mediums” (1, p. 318).

From India to the Planet Mars

According to historian Sonu Shamdasani, in his Introduction (which has what is relevant to this post): “At the end of the nineteenth century, many of the leading psychologists—Freud, Jung, Ferenczi, Bleuler, James, Myers, Janet, Bergson, Stanley Hall, Schrenck-Notzing, Moll, Dessoir, Richet, and Flournoy—frequented mediums…What took place in the seances enthralled the leading minds of the time, and had a crucial bearing on many of the most significant aspects of twentieth-century psychology, linguistics, philosophy, psychoanalysis, literature, and painting, not to mention psychical research…

“For [Frederic] Myers, whom Flournoy called the founder of subliminal psychology…in contradistinction to his contemporaries such as Freud and Janet, the unconscious, or as he termed it, the subliminal—the secondary personalities revealed in trance states, dreaming, crystal gazing, and automatic writing—potentially possessed a higher intelligence than one’s waking or supraliminal personality and often served to convey messages of guidance…

“Myers ended up embracing the spiritist hypothesis and attempted to unite science and religion in an overarching synthesis…Flournoy, by contrast, attempted to maintain a purely psychological viewpoint…

“For [William] James and Flournoy, the investigation of trance states was a central question if a psychology worthy of the name was to develop. Within this enterprise, the investigation of mediums held pride of place…

“The innovation of From India to the Planet Mars was that it was the first major study of what Myers called pseudo-possession, whose main goal was to disprove the supernatural origin of the phenomena and to give an account of their psychogenesis. In such a manner it established a devastating skeptical paradigm in psychical research…

“Cryptomnesia plays a crucial role in Flournoy’s analysis as the main alternative paradigm to the spiritualistic hypothesis…For Flournoy what was presented as a memory—in the case of Helene, of an anterior existence—in actuality represented a hidden and forgotten memory that had been through a process of subconscious elaboration…Spiritualists were up in arms about the book, for understandable reasons…

The “transition from spiritualism to multiple personality is very clearly developed in From India to the Planet Mars. While Flournoy rejects the extrapsychic existence of the figures in Helene’s trances, and regards them as intrapsychic, he still regards them as personalities…the psychologization of mediumship leads to a multiple personality model. From India to the Planet Mars was the first psychological study of multiple personality to become a best-seller…

“Throughout From India to the Planet Mars, Flournoy never ceases to marvel at the artistic and dramatic powers of Helene’s subconscious creative imagination. On one reading what is left of her romances when shorn of their spiritualistic garb is precisely art…"

The Introduction to From India to the Planet Mars concludes with this quotation from Ellenberger (Psychology Today, March 1973, p. 56), the historian of the unconscious quoted at the beginning of this post:

“Flournoy was a great explorer of the mythopoetic unconscious, particularly in his book From India to the Planet Mars…Today we seldom hear of the mythopoetic unconscious. What psychoanalysts call fantasies represent a minute part of mythopoetic manifestations. We have lost sight of the importance of this terrible power—a power that fathered epidemics of demonism, collective psychoses among witches, revelations of spiritualists, the so-called reincarnations of mediums, automatic writing, the mirages that lured generations of hypnotists, and the profuse literature of the subliminal imagination…unfortunately neither Freud nor Jung became aware of the mythopoetic unconscious” (2, pp. xi-li)

And note: The thing that mediumship makes public is that the mythopoetic “unconscious" is populated by, and is a function of, alternate personalities, who, even when behind-the-scenes, and out of the awareness of the regular self, are usually conscious, and often busy making things up.

1. Henri F. Ellenberger. The Discovery of the Unconscious: The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry. New York, Basic Books, 1970.

2. Théodore Flournoy. From India to the Planet Mars: A Case of Multiple Personality with Imaginary Languages [1899/1901]. With a Forward by C. G. Jung and Commentary by Mireille Cifali. Edited and Introduced by Sonu Shamdasani. Princeton N.J., Princeton University Press, 1994.

Martin Gardner’s “How Mrs. Piper Bamboozled William James” does not show that the famous medium did so, and misses the lesson of her multiple personality

“Mrs. Leonora Piper (1859-1950)…the most famous direct-voice medium in American history…went into trances during which spirits of the dead took over her vocal cords or seized her hand to write what they dictated” (1, p. 252). Yes, it was that view of what she did that made her famous. But, contrary to what his title implies, Gardner does not claim that James believed Piper contacted the dead, because, as Gardner admits, James never believed it.

James found Piper to be an interesting case of multiple personality, whose alternate personalities occasionally came up with facts whose source defied explanation. And James, skeptical but open-minded, thought that until it was proved Piper got these facts by ordinary means—which Gardner insists, but doesn’t prove—then paranormal cognition of some sort could not be ruled in or ruled out. In any case, all that is speculative, and not James’s main conclusion about mediumship.

In James’s textbook of psychology, he says, “In ‘mediumships’ or ‘possessions’…the secondary consciousness speaks, writes, or acts as if animated by a foreign person…In old times the foreign ‘control’ was usually a demon…Mediumistic possession…seems to form a perfectly natural special type of alternate personality, and the susceptibility to it in some form is by no means an uncommon gift, in persons who have no other obvious nervous anomaly…I have no theory to publish of these cases, several of which I have personally seen.” (2, pp. 393-394).

Thus, James’s only definite opinion about mediumship is that it involves multiple personality, and that it shows multiple personality to be something that “is by no means an uncommon gift” in people who are not mentally ill. Moreover, aside from the issue of mediumship, in general, James concludes, “The same brain may subserve many conscious selves, either alternate or coexisting” (2, p. 401).

1. Martin Gardner. Are Universes Thicker Than Blackberries? Discourses on Godel, Magic Hexagrams, Little Red Riding Hood, and Other Mathematical and Pseudoscientific Topics. New York, W. W. Norton, 2003.

2. William James. The Principles of Psychology [1890], Volume One. New York, Dover Publications, 1950.

Daniel Halpern’s Who’s Writing This?: Fifty-five writers are coaxed by their editor to publicly acknowledge a nonclinical version of multiple personality

Multiple personality is implicit in the title, “Who’s Writing This?” It implies that the creative writing is done by a secret, second self, and not by the regular, social self to whom it is attributed.

Daniel Halpern in his Preface asks “Who is doing the writing?…using as prototype the signature Borges mini-essay, ‘Borges and I’…We meet…the writers we always thought were singular entities…”

Is it all just “spoof and play”?

“Well,” says Halpern, “the fiction throughout the essays is not so much in the writing as in the attribution.”

The fifty-five writers include two mentioned in this blog, Margaret Atwood and Joyce Carol Oates. And while some writers do give the impression that they are joking, others, like John Updike, straightforwardly describe distinct differences between their writing and social personalities; for example, in his case, the former “stutters” and the latter is “suave.”

Since the book uses euphemism, and does not refer to multiple personality by name, Halpern and the writers may be in denial. Nevertheless, some of the writers are clearly describing a nonclinical version of multiple personality.

Daniel Halpern (Editor). Who’s Writing This? Fifty-five Writers on Humor, Courage, Self-Loathing, and the Creative Process. New York, ecco Harper Perennial, 1995/2009.

“Losing Time” in Multiple Personality: The connection between Joyce Carol Oates’ The Lost Landscape and Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time

In multiple personality, some personalities are aware of each other, but others are not, and one personality will have a memory gap (amnesia) for the periods of time that the other personality has been out and in control.

Since most persons who have multiple personality do not know it, what do they make of their memory gaps? They often think of it as losing time. Occasionally, they lose time. No big deal.

But since many people with multiple personality do think of their memory gaps as “losing time,” a standard question to screen people for multiple personality is: Do you ever lose time? To persons without multiple personality, the question will seem silly. But persons who do have multiple personality may immediately know what you mean.

Thus, the title of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time is a big neon sign announcing that Proust had multiple personality (see past posts).

Does “Lost” in the title of Oates’ memoir The Lost Landscape have the same implication? To find out, see my post on Joyce Carol Oates from earlier this month.

Normal Novelists have-use-enjoy Multiple Personality: Implications for Fiction Writers, Literary Criticism, Human Nature, and the Creative Process

Probably 90% of novelists and possibly 30% of the general public have a normal version of multiple personality: they have true multiple personality (not just multiple roles or variable moods), but it does not cause them any significant distress or dysfunction, so they are not mentally ill. And for some purposes, such as writing novels, it is a major advantage.

Fiction Writers

If you don’t have a normal version of multiple personality, you are unlikely to become a novelist. Writing a novel without having multiple personality is like trying to recognize a face by measuring each facial feature and then comparing the measurements with those of all existing faces: It is theoretically possible to do that, but the brain has a better way. 

Similarly, it is theoretically possible to mechanically construct characters and stories, but it is not practical, especially since your competitors are people with multiple personality who have a genius for conjuring up alternate personalities (characters) and their imaginary worlds. (Of course, you still need to practice the craft and work very hard. Multiple personality is necessary, but not sufficient.)

Literary Criticism

Many novels have characters with unrecognized multiple personality (see past posts), because neither the characters nor the narrator ever mention multiple personality, per se, and most readers are not alert to the possibility.

When the multiple personality is not essential to either characterization or plot—e.g., Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl—I call it gratuitous multiple personality, which means that the only reason for its presence in the novel is that it probably reflects the novelist’s own psychology.

When the multiple personality is essential to the characterization and plot—e.g., Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde—but the novel never mentions multiple personality, per se, then I call it unacknowledged multiple personality, which also probably reflects the novelist’s own psychology.

No “Unconscious” in Multiple Personality

Some novelists might be quick to say they already know about psychology, and that, yes, they do sometimes get messages and ideas from their “unconscious.” But “the unconscious” is a misnomer, because anything that thinks, has ideas, and sends messages is obviously conscious. What multiple personality demonstrates is that the mind, rather than having a conscious and an unconscious, has, at least in some persons, multiple consciousness.

Alternate personalities are almost always conscious, even when they not “out.” The fact that the host personality is not aware of what an alternate personality is thinking, does not make those thoughts unconscious, any more than my not knowing what your thoughts are, makes your thoughts unconscious.

When personalities are not out, they are either monitoring what is going on with the host personality and the social situation, or they may be busy behind the scenes, which is how some problems get solved while the host personality is otherwise occupied.

Roles and Moods vs. Multiple Personality

A common myth about multiple personality is that it does not really exist, but is just a fancy way to say that people have different roles and moods. Let me explain the difference.

Roles include parent, child, spouse, work, sports, citizenship, religion, race, gender, etc.; by moods I mean, sometimes you are in the mood for this, but other times you are in the mood for that. And it is quite true that a person’s behavior and attitude may be quite different, depending on which of their roles and moods is foremost at the moment.

However, most people, no matter which of their roles or moods is foremost, feel like they are basically the same person. Their subjective experience is of being one person, who adapts to different roles, and who experiences different moods.

In contrast, in multiple personality, there appears to be more than one person or being, which accounts for the old view of multiple personality as “possession.” For example, some novelists (the regular, host personality) have the sense of being the one who writes down the novels, but see their job as often being that of a transcriber and/or interpreter and/or editor of what is provided to them by the “voice” and/or “muse” and/or characters. These are alternate personalities, the essence of which is to have a sense of being and a mind of its own.

Of course, novelists know that all these entities with minds of their own are, objectively, a product of their own mind and imagination. The novelist is not crazy. But their alternate personalities and the stories they tell feel real—some novelists say “more real than real”—subjectively speaking.

And how could a would-be novelist, who does not have this, compete?

Fiction Writing, Mediumship, and Margaret Atwood’s Negotiating with the Dead: the case of the Witch of Endor in the Hebrew Bible (1 Samuel 28:3-15)

My previous example of multiple personality in the Bible was in the New Testament, Mark 5:1-20, the case of the Gerasene demoniac, who, when Jesus asked him his name, famously replied, “My name is Legion; for we are many.” Another example of multiple personality is found in the First Book of Samuel, the story of The Medium (or Witch) of Endor. For, from a psychological point of view, a medium cannot conjure up the deceased, but can only conjure up an alternate personality who represents the deceased.

“Now Samuel had died, and all Israel had mourned for him and buried him…And Saul had put the mediums and the wizards out of the land. The Philistines assembled…and Saul gathered all Israel…When Saul saw the army of the Philistines, he was afraid…And when Saul inquired of the Lord, the Lord did not answer him, either by dreams…or by prophets. Then Saul said to his servants, ‘Seek out for me a woman who is a medium, that I may go to her and inquire of her.’ And his servants said to him, ‘Behold, there is a medium at Endor.’

“So Saul disguised himself…and…came to the woman by night. And he said, ‘Divine for me by a spirit, and bring up for me whomever I shall name to you.’ The woman said to him, ‘Surely you know what Saul has done, how he has cut off the mediums and wizards from the land. Why then are you laying a snare for my life to bring about my death?’ But Saul swore to her by the Lord, ‘As the Lord lives, no punishment shall come upon you for this thing.’ Then the woman said, ‘Whom shall I bring up for you?’ He said, ‘Bring up Samuel for me…what do you see?’ And the woman said to Saul…‘An old man is coming up; and he is wrapped in a robe.’ And Saul knew that it was Samuel…

“Then Samuel said to Saul, ‘Why have you disturbed me by bringing me up?’ Saul answered, ‘I am in great distress; for the Philistines are warring against me, and God has turned away from me and answers me no more, either by prophets or by dreams; therefore I have summoned you to tell me what to do.'“

Now, when Saul speaks to the late Samuel, who is it that Saul is actually speaking to? It is the “Samuel” alternate personality of the medium. The way that people “speak to the dead” through a medium is that the medium enters a self-hypnotic trance, and then switches to a custom-made alternate personality who represents the deceased. And this process is similar to the way that novelists enter a kind of self-hypnotic trance, conjure up their characters, and then serve as a medium through which their characters are known to their readers.

In this regard, I might mention a book that I’ve mentioned before, a book by Margaret Atwood, in which she talks about the writer’s “jekyll hand and hyde hand,” and says that the writer is always a dual personality. The title of her book is “Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing” (New York, Anchor Books, 2002). She says the title refers to the way that writing helps the writer deal with the fear of death. But the title suggests to me that the writer is like a medium, and that writing is a kind of mediumship.

Joyce Carol Oates’ multiple personality “secret” in You Must Remember This, Journal, Poisoned Kiss Afterword, JCO and I, Widow’s Story, Lost Landscape

Professor Oates is a major novelist. She has won more than twenty literary awards. What kind of mind, what kind of special ability, can do that?

I will document that she, like most great novelists, has a normal version of multiple personality, which—along with her avid reading, decades of practice, and tireless work—explains her great accomplishment.

I will begin with one of her novels, and a question that I asked her about it, but the rest of this post will quote from her nonfiction: journal, essays, interviews, and memoirs.

You Must Remember This (New York, E. P. Dutton, 1987)

Enid Maria is the protagonist. Angel-face is Enid’s alternate personality:

“Once there was Enid Maria and there was Angel-face but Enid Maria knew very little about Angel-face while Angel-face knew everything about Enid Maria. Sometimes for the sheer hell of it Angel-face scrambled Enid Maria’s bureau drawers to confuse her, mislaid her homework to terrify her, lost her library books so she’d have to pay a fine; she even, sometimes, punished Enid Maria by losing her lunch money—you can do without, you don’t deserve to eat. Enid understood it was dangerous to walk along a busy street in Angel-face’s company because Angel-face might decide suddenly, whimsically, to cross the street—smiling and doing any damn thing she pleased. And she could get away with it!

“The ‘good’ girl, the honor student at De Witt Clinton Junior High, was Enid Maria Stevick…The other girl, Angel-face, was Enid too…” (p. 36).

When I asked Oates why Enid’s multiple personality was not mentioned in the second half of the novel, Oates denied that Enid had multiple personality, and insisted that Enid had “ordinary psychology.”

Why would Oates think that having an alternate personality is ordinary psychology?

The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates 1973-1982 (New York, ecco/HarperCollins, 2007) acknowledges that she has alternate personalities, and calls them her “secret”

December 2, 1974 “...For quite a while now I have been in consciousness—…and in this phase of personality I frankly find it difficult to sympathize with, to remember, the other phase. My earlier journal, written in longhand—typically!—could be by another person, it’s so thoughtful, solemn, even a little pious, and extraordinarily idealistic—yet very sincere, I suppose. That other self of mine!—and yet I know very well that I will become that ‘self’ again...for consciousness has very little control over itself, very little.”

One of Joyce Carol Oates’ personalities is commenting about another of Joyce Carol Oates’ personalities. The one speaking, who is now out and in control (“in consciousness”) knows about the other personality indirectly, from reading the other personality’s journal entries, which are distinct (“could be by another person”) in both form (“written in longhand—typically!”) and content (“thoughtful, solemn, pious, idealistic”). She expects that the two of them will continue to alternate, since she has very little control over which of them is out at any given time.

February 11, 1975 “…Dinner the other evening with John Gardner and his wife…he believes that art can be ‘directed’…It has not been my experience, however…“I”…Joyce who is his friend…would gladly write such a novel for the edification of all; but unfortunately, that self does not handle the writing…”

March 22, 1976 “...Am I completely normal, and the ‘Joyce Carol Oates’ of the books is a persona...or am I deceiving myself, am I the person[a], and ‘Joyce Carol Oates’ is the reality? Or is there no distinction, really? I have so little to do with the…worldview of Oates’ fiction that it doesn’t engage my thoughts in the slightest…”

In other words, the host personality is wondering who the real person is—she, or the other personality, who does the writing.

June 10, 1979 “...The ‘secret’...which sometimes feels awkward as a hammer stuck in my pocket, getting in my way...at other times small and contained and indeed unobtrusive as a tiny pebble...something foreign to me, yet carried about by me, invisible. I once thought the two or three selves in combat would be resolved, and one would triumph—and the worry of the secret—or whatever I must call it—would dissolve. But this hasn’t happened. It won’t happen.”

May 31, 1982 “…yesterday…Bill Robertson of the Miami Herald, Bill asked me to respond to the fact that virtually everyone he knew in Miami believed I was insane. I asked him to repeat the statement…since I have been teaching at universities since 1961…and have published so many books…So, I thought, it all goes for, what?—nothing?…For this, so many hours of diligent labor; of exacting craftsmanship; of (let’s say) rarely missing a day of teaching in twenty years; of living what I had imagined to be a resolutely “sane” life. (How do I account for it? I told Bill. They must be unusually stupid, your friends.)”

In Joyce Carol Oates’ Note and Afterword to The Poisoned Kiss, she says that it was written by an alternate personality named Fernandes, and not metaphorically

Oates’ introductory Note

“The tales in this collection are translated from an imaginary work, Azulejos, by an imaginary author, Fernandes de Briao. To the best of my knowledge he has no existence and has never existed, though without his very real guidance I would not have had access to the mystical “Portugal” of the stories—nor would I have been compelled to recognize the authority of a world-view quite antithetical to my own.”

From Oates’ Afterword (1, pp. 187-189)

“In November of 1970, while I was occupied as usual with my own writing, I began to dream about and to sense, while awake, some other life, or vision, or personality…One day I wrote a story that was strange to me…I did not understand the story and in a way I felt it was not my own…

“…I was never able to designate myself as the author of the stories; they were all published under the name ‘Fernandes’…

“Contrary to what one might believe, an experience like this—either real or imagined ‘possession’—is not really disturbing…I was able to keep up with my own writing and my university teaching without much difficulty…

“…Years later, writing this afterword, I am almost tempted to return to my earliest and most conventional diagnosis of the experience and claim it to be only ‘metaphorical’—the stories, the book they gradually evolved into, the afterword itself. But in truth none of it was metaphorical, any more than you and I are metaphorical.”  —Joyce Carol Oates, March 1975

1. Fernandes/Joyce Carol Oates. The Poisoned Kiss and other stories from the Portuguese. New York, The Vanguard Press, 1971-1975.

Joyce Carol Oates quotes Jorge Luis Borges’s “Borges and I” (also see my past post) to illustrate every writer’s multiple personality

In “Does the Writer Exist?” (April 22, 1984, The New York Times Book Review) (available online), Oates says that a fiction writer’s social self and writing self are two distinctly different personalities. They are so different that when you meet the social self, it makes you wonder if the person who did the writing even exists.

In this regard, she mentions Thomas Hardy, George Eliot, James Joyce, Marcel Proust, Flannery O’Connor, Dylan Thomas, Delmore Schwartz, Robert Lowell, Edmund Wilson, Robert Frost, and Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll). But the two writers she cites at length are Jorge Luis Borges and Henry James.

Oates says, “Jorge Luis Borges has written so powerfully of the split in himself that it is a temptation to quote him in (near) entirety from ‘Borges and I’ “:

''It's to the other man, to Borges, that things happen. I walk along the streets of Buenos Aires, stopping now and then - perhaps out of habit - to look at the arch of an old entranceway or a grillwork gate; of Borges I get news through the mail and glimpse his name among a committee of professors or in a dictionary of biography. I have a taste for hourglasses, maps, eighteenth-century typography, the roots of words, the smell of coffee, and Stevenson's prose; the other man shares these likes, but in a showy way that turns them into stagy mannerisms. It would be an exaggeration to say that we are on bad terms; I live, I let myself live, so that Borges can weave his tales and poems. . . . Little by little, I have been surrendering everything to him, even though I have evidence of his stubborn habit of falsification and exaggerating. . . . Years ago, I tried ridding myself of him and I went from the myths of the outlying slums of the city to games with time and infinity, but those games are now part of Borges and I will have to turn to other things. And so, my life is a running away, and I lose everything and everything is left to oblivion or to the other man. Which of us is writing this page I don't know.’’

Oates discusses Henry James’s short story, “The Private Life,” at even greater length, but I have already discussed that story in a past post.

In short, when Joyce Carol Oates wrote “ ‘JCO’ AND I (After Borges),” she was, like Borges, revealing her own split personality.

“JCO” and I (After Borges): A brief essay by Joyce Carol Oates, published in one of her nonfiction books

“ ‘JCO’ is not a person, nor even a personality, but a process that has resulted in a sequence of texts…I, on the contrary, am fated to be ‘real’—‘physical’—‘corporeal’—to ‘exist in Time.’ I continue to age year by year, if not hour by hour, while ‘JCO,’ the other, remains no fixed age…perhaps…a precocious eighteen years old…

“ ‘JCO’ occasionally mines, and distorts, my personal history…

“It would be misleading to describe our relationship as hostile…we are more helpfully defined as diamagnetic, the one repulsing the other as magnetic poles repulse each other, so that ‘JCO’ eclipses me, or…I eclipse ‘JCO’…

“For once not she, but I, am writing these pages. Or so I believe” (1, pp. 153-155).

The alternate personality who wrote this brief essay says that “JCO” is a process, not a person or personality, but, then again, JCO may be like a precocious eighteen-year-old. What does this mean?

It may mean that “JCO” is not any one person or personality, but refers to a group of personalities, perhaps one of whom stays eighteen-years-old and never ages. (In multiple personality, some personalities age, but others, like Lewis Carroll’s Peter Pan, never age.)

It would not be unusual for a group of personalities to be known by one public name. That situation was illustrated in Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray. As I pointed out in a past post, “Dorian Gray” was a name that actually referred to a whole group of distinct personalities.

1. Joyce Carol Oates. The Faith of a Writer: Life, Craft, Art. New York, ECCO/HarperCollins, 2003.

Joyce Carol Oates’ Interviews: She describes how her mind works, including her sense of having “strangers” (characters) appear in her mind, whom she becomes (which makes them alternate personalities)

“When I’m with people I often fall into a kind of waking sleep, a daydreaming about the people, the strangers, who are to be the ‘characters’ in a story or a novel I will be writing. I can’t do much about this habit. At times my head seems crowded; there is a kind of pressure inside it, almost a frightening physical sense of confusion, fullness, dizziness. Strange people appear in my thoughts, and define themselves slowly to me: first their faces, then their personalities and quirks and personal histories, then their relationships with other people, who very slowly appear; and a kind of ‘plot’ then becomes clear to me, as I figure out how all these people come together and what they are doing. I can see them at times very closely, and indeed I ‘am’ them—my personality merges with theirs” (1, p. 16).

“I seem to be always dreaming, awake or asleep, though when I’m awake I know I’m awake. I wonder if this is normal…? My husband evidently doesn’t experience this” (1, p. 20).

“My characters really dictate themselves to me. I am not free of them, really, and I can’t force them into situations they haven’t themselves willed. They have the autonomy of characters in a dream. In fact, when I glance through what I have tried to say to you, it occurs to me that I am really transcribing dreams, giving them a certain civilized, extended shape, clearing a few things up, adding daytime details, subtracting fantastic details, and so on, in order to make the story or the novel a work of art” (1, p. 24).

Interviewer: Are the novels of Rosamond Smith [one of Oates’ pseudonyms] the kind of novels that Joyce Carol Oates would write?

Oates:…All the Smith novels are about twins of one kind or another (1, p. 165-166)

Interviewer: How important are names for your characters?

Oates: Absolutely important. I spend a long time naming names. If I can’t get a name right I can’t write, I can’t begin. I have a lot of names that begin with J, especially men. It’s like my alter ego” (1, p. 169).

“I am always working. I can be riding a bicycle or jogging, which I love to do, and I’m still working in my mind. I have a short-term photographic memory, so when I’m away from my writing I can see the pages I’ve written that morning, and I can edit them in my head—even punctuation” (1, p. 181).

“My process as a writer is to build character simply by inhabiting him or her obsessively. During the course of writing a novel, I am immersed in my protagonists’ souls virtually all my waking life. (And perhaps much of my dream life as well.) I see my own world, which I move through myself, through ‘fictitious’ eyes, and note what my characters would think or do in similar situations” (1, p. 196).

“I think that people who are artists have twin souls. There is the domestic self and then there is an imaginative self…These two are very often like twins who are at war with each other” (1, p. 197).

Interviewer: Lately you’ve also undertaken a new pseudonymous identity, Lauren Kelly…

JCO: Rosamond Smith seems to have metamorphosed into Lauren Kelly, a somewhat younger variant; more svelte, seemingly, since the novels are shorter, more succinct and narrative-driven, though turning still upon the phenomenon of linked doubles, twins, “soul mates.” (1, pp. 240-241).

1. Greg Johnson (Editor). Joyce Carol Oates Conversations 1970-2006. Princeton NJ, Ontario Review Press, 2006.

Joyce Carol Oates’ A Widow’s Story: “I have walled myself off from ‘Joyce Carol Oates,’ " says the memoir’s main narrator, who is not the fiction-writing personality

At least one reviewer of this memoir accused Oates of hypocrisy, since it was only six months after her first husband’s death in 2008—after a marriage of forty-seven years—that she met a new man, whom she married in 2009. In my view, her remarriage and continued literary productivity show resilience and mental health.

The memoir’s relevance to this blog is its evidence of the author’s multiple personality, which is seen in three interrelated ways: first, in its multiple narrative voices (sometimes highlighted by the text’s change to italics); second, by the distinction that the narrator makes between herself and the Joyce Carol Oates who does the fiction writing; and third, by its repeated, passing comments, such as: “ ‘Joyce Carol Oates’ doesn’t exist, except as an author-identification” (p. 170) and “I’ve come to think of my ‘self’—my ‘personality’—as an entity that collapses when I am alone and unperceived by others; but then, as if by magic, when I am with other people, my ‘personality’ reassembles itself” (p. 233). (The latter is like what Henry James dramatizes in his short story, “The Private Life.”)

Oates use of her own name is complicated, and I can only guess at exactly what she means. I think she uses “Joyce Carol Oates” in two senses. One sense is “Joyce,” her social self or host personalty. Joyce “collapses” (goes to sleep or behind the scenes) in private, non-social situations, when her writing personalities take over. Her writing personalities are collectively known as “Joyce Carol Oates.” When she comes back into a social situation, “Joyce” comes back out.

In Oates’ A Widow’s Story, the wife/widow, social personality (the main narrator) distinguishes herself from the “Joyce Carol Oates” personalities as follows:

“In our marriage…I walled off from my husband the part of my life that is ‘Joyce Carol Oates’—which is to say, my writing career [he never even read her novels]…but then, I [the wife/widow personality] have walled myself off from ‘Joyce Carol Oates’ as well.” (pp. 123-125).

In this sense, “Joyce Carol Oates” is all the various personalities involved in the author’s writing career, which might include the personality who teaches creative writing at college, as well as the various, more hidden, personalities involved in the actual writing of novels. As she says, “Writing can be a descent into one’s deepest, most hidden…selves” (p. 318).

Joyce Carol Oates. A Widow’s Story: A Memoir. New York, ecco/HarperCollins, 2011.

Joyce Carol Oates. The Lost Landscape (New York, ecco/HarperCollins, 2015): This just published coming-of-age memoir includes dissociative amnesia (a feature of multiple personality) and implies the existence of alternate personalities

Dissociative Amnesia at Age Five

The chapter “Happy Chicken” has a different narrator from most of the memoir. Here, Joyce Carol Oates is usually referred to by the narrator as “the little girl.” When the little girl was five years old, she was allowed to help “the Grandmother” collect eggs on their family farm. The narrator says:

“Grandma was the one, you know. The one who killed the chickens.

No! I did not know.

Of course you must have known, Joyce. You must have seen—many times…

No. I didn’t know. I never saw.

But…

I never saw” (p. 27).

“Sometime the little girl was breathless and frightened but why, the little girl would not afterward recall” (p. 29).

This alternate narrator—in the rhetorical, humorous guise of Joyce’s pet chicken, Happy Chicken—may be an alternate personality who knew things that little Joyce did not want to remember, like who killed the the cute, innocent chickens on their family farm.

Probably Alternate Personalities; Possibly Dissociative Fugues

In most of this memoir, Oates describes herself as a shy, timid, nice girl. So it is quite out of character when she engages in dangerous, solitary, wandering or reckless stunts. The wanderings were probably directed by an alternate personality, and may have included some dissociative fugues (search “dissociative fugue” in this blog).

“…I must have loved aloneness. Until the age of twelve or thirteen my most intense, happiest hours were spent tramping desolate fields, woods, creek banks near my family’s farmhouse…No one knew where I went. No one could have guessed how far I wandered…Our answers are vague…We learn to obfuscate the truth even when the truth is not harmful to us…” (p. 85). [Is that a slip into using the multiple personality plural?] She took dangerous paths and encountered solitary fishermen. Did anything untoward happen with the fishermen? “I have no memory” (p. 86).

Another “memory divorced of all context and explanation” is walking where she risked a fatal fall or being crippled for life. And, “In the company of other children, I was compelled to be the most reckless” (pp. 87-88). Compelled by whom? Perhaps by an alternate personality like the fictional Angel-face, mentioned at the beginning of this post.

Conclusion

Joyce Carol Oates, according to what she says about herself—beginning with her Journal, in which she reveals her “secret”—has a normal version of multiple personality.

Professor Oates, who may or may not still consider an alternate personality to be ordinary psychology, may disagree with me. And certainly, my idea that 90% of novelists, and possibly 30% of the general public, have a normal version of multiple personality, is not conventional wisdom.

However, I will keep writing this blog, and by the time I get to the hundredth novelist, my thesis may become conventional wisdom, because, as you see in this post, it is really rather obvious.

“Voice” metaphor used by both Adam Kirsch and Charles McGrath in NYT Book Review debate, “Is everyone a critic, or are special qualifications needed?”

If you search “voice” in this blog, you find more than fifteen posts. So I couldn’t help notice that both essays in yesterday’s New York Times “Bookends” debate used the voice metaphor.

Charles McGrath said, “How many of these voices [critics] are worth paying attention to is something else.” Adam Kirsch said, “In fact, appreciating a work of art requires the suspension of exactly that kind of judgment — the voice in your head telling you whether this book or this picture is done ‘the right way,’ which usually just means the familiar way.”

McGrath is speaking of critical voices out in the world, not in anyone’s head, but would it have occurred to him to use the voice to stand for a critic if he had never had a critical voice in his head?

Now, since there are many people who have never experienced their conscience or critical judgment as a voice in their head, the question arises as to why some people do have that experience. One fact to consider is that a rational voice in the head may imply the presence of an alternate personality.

So, is a person’s use of the voice metaphor a sign of multiple personality? Perhaps, but not necessarily, since they might be using “voice” as a buzzword or cliché.

The Novelist’s Creative Process: How can you learn anything from interviews, essays, and memoirs, if that isn’t the personality who writes the novels?

We know from Margaret Atwood’s nonfiction book on writing (see past post) and Henry James’s short story “The Private Life” (see past post) that the novelist’s nonfiction/social/host personality is not the personality who writes the novels. So how can you learn much about a novelist’s creative process from their interviews and nonfiction?

In past posts, I have criticized interviewers, because, for example, when novelists mention hearing the voices of their characters, interviewers never pursue it, never ask to be told more about these auditory hallucinations.

But maybe interviewers have asked such questions in the past, found the novelist had nothing more to say—didn’t know anything more or felt the interview was getting too personal—and so now they no longer ask. Or maybe interviewers think that anyone who hears voices is crazy, and they fear that if you ask about their voices, they might have a breakdown.

I can’t give advice that would work with all novelists. But in regard to novelists’ hearing voices when they are immersed in their writing process, I would suggest that the interviewer, politely and gently, stay with the issue, even if it is making the host personality a little uncomfortable. After five or ten minutes, the host personality may be replaced by a personality who is happy to talk about it. (To get a switch back to the regular personality, all you have to do is change the focus of discussion back to mundane issues.)

As to novelists’ nonfiction writings—essays, journals, memoirs, letters—these can be informative if a literary novelist is confession-minded, psychologically-minded, and/or prolific.

Why prolific? In a limited conversation with a person who has multiple personality, you are likely to be talking to only the host personality. But the longer you talk to a person who has multiple personality, the greater the chance that an alternate personality will come out. And a prolific writer is like a person who is having a very long conversation. Also, they may be prolific, in part, because they have more cowriters.

Rosamond Smith’s Double Delight: The protagonist has multiple personality—his mistress may, too—but do the novelist and literary critics know it?

Protagonist’s Multiple Personality

The protagonist is described at one point as shopping for a big, expensive bird cage for his mistress, which he later may not remember buying. And during the shopping, he is seen and recognized by one of his daughters, but the personality shopping for his mistress does not recognize who his daughter is. This kind of absentmindedness is a well-known symptom of multiple personality.

Another sign of the protagonist’s multiple personality is that, at first, he is not sure if he has has killed a young man whom he had told to stay away from his daughter, but whom he saw, one night, leaving his house. He is not sure if the murder and disposal of the body (carried away in a rug) were real or a dream. To find out, he checks to see if the rug is still where it had been before the murder, and he finds that it is gone. Moreover, the young man, from a well-to-do family in the area, has, in fact, gone missing since that very night, and is probably never found.

I should note that it is common for people with multiple personality to sometimes have difficulty distinguishing their dream and waking lives, because their waking imagination can be so involving and vivid (“more real than real,” as Toni Morrison said). I have quoted novelists in this blog referring to their “waking dreams.” And that very phrase is used a number of times in this novel.

In addition to the above, the protagonist is frequently described as acting out of character, in everything from what he drinks to committing other murders. Also, the text is frequently interrupted by commentary written in italics, which may be a chorus of his (or the novelist’s) alternate personalities.

Mistress is “Twins”?

Toward the end of the novel, the protagonist, Terence, is visited by a woman who claims to be his mistress’s identical twin:

Terence stared at the young woman, astonished.

“I’m Ava-Grace Renfrew, her sister. I’m not surprised, she told you nothing about me…”

“You are—Ava-Rose’s sister?”

“Her twin.”

“Her twin—!” Terence stared, appalled.

“Don’t look so shocked, this is us, I am us, and she is…something else” (1, p. 294).

Now, what is the reader to make of “I am us”? It is never explained. But it is worth knowing that people with multiple personality occasionally, usually inadvertently, blow their cover, and speak of themselves in the plural.

Discussion

Most dictionaries of literary terms do not have any entry for “the Double” or the “theme of the double.” And those few dictionaries that do may mention the doppelgänger, mirror image, alter ego, secret sharer, divided self, or being divided into two distinct, usually antithetical, personalities, and may even add that critics are increasingly aware that the “self” may be a composite of many “selves” (2, pp. 66-67). However, amazingly, the psychological condition that has these things—multiple personality—is never mentioned.

Does Rosamond Smith know that Terence, and probably Ava-Rose, have multiple personality? Since most novelists, themselves, have multiple personality, and since two personalities can hold contrary opinions, my guess is that Rosamond Smith both knows and doesn’t know that her characters have multiple personality.

1. Rosamond Smith. Double Delight. New York, William Abrahams/Dutton, 1997.

2. Karl Beckson, Arthur Ganz. Literary Terms: A Dictionary. Third Edition. New York, Farrar Straus Giroux, 1989.