“Madness” in “The Bluest Eye” (post 2) by Toni Morrison (post 11) confuses multiple personality with schizophrenia, a common mistake in literature.

The last page of this novel says that Pecola had “stepped over into madness” (p. 206). But on pages 193 through 204, she has just had a long, coherent conversation with an imaginary companion, something which does not happen in schizophrenia or any other psychosis, but only in multiple personality (including when a novelist converses with her characters, an example of normal multiple personality).

Another example of literary “madness” is when Pecola looks in a mirror and hallucinates that her eyes are blue. How did that hallucination come about? She had gone to a faith healer, asked him to make her eyes blue, and was granted her wish by the power of suggestion: Highly suggestible people can get hallucinations like that through the power of suggestion, but truly psychotic people are usually not that suggestible.

Some people with multiple personality are highly suggestible, which is why hypnosis is sometimes used in their treatment. But hypnosis is not used in the treatment of schizophrenia; indeed, if anyone diagnosed with schizophrenia were found to be highly suggestible, it would probably mean that they had been misdiagnosed.

Also see my previous post on “literary madness, a misnomer.”

Toni Morrison. The Bluest Eye [1970]. With an Afterword by the author [1993]. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 2000.