The Philosopher’s Pupil (post 3) by Iris Murdoch (post 5): Protagonist’s puzzling behavior and memory gap are clues he has multiple personality.

The novel begins with George’s attempt to kill his wife. Throughout the novel, he is erratic. Near the end, he murders his former philosophy professor. And finally, inexplicably, he settles down.

In short, this novel is the story of George’s puzzling behavior, which neither the narrator nor George’s family nor anyone else can explain.

For most of the novel, the reader is led to believe that sometime in the past George had probably killed his young son. But, eventually, a discussion between George and his wife, Stella, reveals that their son had probably died due to an accident or negligence involving Stella, not George; that, in fact, George has always protected Stella’s reputation by letting everyone jump to the conclusion that George had been to blame.

For most of the novel, the philosopher is depicted as a Great Man, while George’s hate for him looks entirely crazy and paranoid. But George is not prosecuted for drowning the philosopher in his sleep, because the philosopher has left a suicide note, and had taken an overdose, over his sexual obsession with his seventeen-year-old granddaughter.

Nevertheless, whatever the failings of his wife and the philosopher, George’s behavior has been puzzling. And at the end of the novel, George’s puzzling behavior remains unexplained. But there are clues throughout the novel that George’s puzzling behavior is due to multiple personality.

Clues

“How could I have done that [attempted to kill his wife], he thought, looking down. As on similar occasions in the past, he felt a cleavage between himself and the George who did things” (1, p. 14).

“George was…an expert and dedicated liver of the double life…” (1, p. 73).

“He had seen his own double in the Botanic Gardens…Twice now he had seen this double, capable of anything, walking about and at large” (1, p. 137).

“Sometime I feel like I lose the present moment…my sense of my individuality goes, I can’t feel my present being” (1, p. 144).

“There was in George something that was not himself…” (1, p. 180).

“…there was another man…George realised with a coldness which made him almost faint that this other man was himself…” (1, p. 219).

“George…saw himself in…the mirror. He thought, that’s the man I was following” (1, p. 221).

“George was wearing a black mackintosh, like his alter ego” (1, p. 225).

“George had taken off his black mackintosh…Alex [his mother] thought, he’s different, he’s the same yet different” (1, p. 243).

“Once I saw Uncle George being in two places at the same time” (1, p. 293).

“You can’t explain George by the old theories. You might just as well say he’s possessed by a devil” (1, p. 370).

“That awful giddiness was coming upon him, that physically-announced loss of identity, a most intense sense of his body, of its bulky heavy solidity and of his various views of it, combined with the absolute disappearance of its inhabitant” (1, p. 398).

“ ‘George, let me ask you…whether you did or did not try to kill Stella that night…’ He [George] said, ‘I’m not sure, I can’t remember’ " (1, p. 498).

“I saw my double carrying a hammer. How can another person steal one’s consciousness, how is it possible?” (1, p. 511).

[In spite of everything that has happened in this novel] “…half the women in this town are in love with George” (1, pp. 530-31) [which is not the attitude you would expect toward a man who was truly psychotic].

“George’s hysterical blindness [a dissociative symptom: multiple personality is classified as one of the dissociative disorders] left him after about a fortnight” (1, p. 559).

“Stella…remains puzzled about her husband” (1, p. 563).

Comment

As previously discussed in this blog, the two cardinal clues to the possibility that a person has multiple personality are memory gaps (like George’s inability to recall whether he had actually tried to kill Stella) and a puzzling inconsistency (due to the comings and goings, incognito, of the person’s alternate personalities). Another clue to multiple personality is seemingly psychotic symptoms in a person whose overall behavior and functioning suggest that he is not really psychotic (multiple personality is not categorized as a psychosis and is unrelated to schizophrenia).

George is not the only character in this novel who has multiple personality symptoms such as those quoted above, but his symptoms are more noticeable and more extensively described. As another character says, “George is like everyone else, only in his case it shows” (1, p. 40).

This novel’s view of people—in effect, that most people have multiple personality, but it usually does not show—is an overgeneralization that is probably based on the author’s experience of her own psychology and the psychology of various people she has known.

1. Iris Murdoch. The Philosopher’s Pupil. New York, The Viking Press, 1983.