“Anna Karenina” by Tolstoy (post 6) and “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (post 2): Multiple Personality is revealed in a life crisis.

In post 2 on Tolstoy, I quoted a literary critic as saying that Anna’s declaration of having multiple personality—quoted below—cannot be dismissed as just the raving of a person in a fever, because she has a history of “doubling” earlier in the novel, when she had not been ill.

But that is not the only reason to take what Anna says seriously. The narrator makes it quite clear that Anna is speaking during a lucid period, when her delirium has temporarily abated:

“From the bedroom came Anna’s voice saying something. Her voice was gay, animated, with extremely distinct intonations…She seemed not only healthy and fresh but also in the best of spirits. She spoke quickly, sonorously, and with unusually regular and deep-felt intonations.

“ ‘Because Alexei — I am speaking of Alexei Alexandrovich (such a strange, terrible fate, that they’re both [both her lover and husband] Alexei, isn’t it? — Alexei wouldn’t refuse me…

“…Alexei [her husband], come here. I’m hurrying because I have no time, I haven’t long to live, I’ll be feverish soon and won’t understand anything. Now I do understand, I understand everything, I see everything…

“ ‘Yes,’ she began. ‘Yes, yes, yes. This is what I wanted to say. Don’t be surprised at me. I’m the same. But there is another woman in me, I’m afraid of her — she fell in love with that man [her lover], and I wanted to hate you and couldn’t forget the other one who was there before. The one who is not me. Now I’m real, I’m whole…No, you can’t forgive me! I know this can’t be forgiven! No, no, go away, you’re too good!’ With one hot hand she held his hand, and with the other she pushed him away.”

                                *

“The doctor and his colleagues said it was puerperal fever, which in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred ends in death. All day there was fever, delirium and unconsciousness. By midnight the sick woman lay without feeling and almost without pulse.

“The end was expected at any moment” (pp. 411-414).

But this is an 817 page novel, and Anna fully recovers.

“Anna Karenina” is the second work I have discussed about a woman who becomes more aware of her multiple personality after giving birth. The first was “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Search “Gilman” in this blog.

Why would multiple personality be more obvious after giving birth? No special reason. It is an example of the general principle that multiple personality becomes more obvious when a person who has multiple personality (since childhood) is undergoing a major change or crisis.

Most of the time, multiple personality is hidden and secretive. The regular self is not aware (or only vaguely aware) of the alternate personalities, and the latter go about their business incognito. That is why most people who have multiple personality are never recognized as having it.

However, during a life crisis of one sort or another, the personalities are more likely to bump into each other and be less discreet. This is when the small minority of multiples who ever do get diagnosed, usually get their diagnosis.

[Added 7:18 pm: Of course, people who have some expertise in diagnosing multiple personality can diagnose it even if there is no current crisis, by asking relevant questions, which most clinicians have never been taught. Search "mental status exam."]

But after the crisis passes, and everything reverts to its usual hiddenness and secretiveness, the episode is usually shrugged off as a temporary disturbance.

Leo Tolstoy. Anna Karenina. Trans. Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky. New York, Penguin, 2000/2002.