Virginia Woolf (post 8): Bipolar disorder cannot account for having many personalities, including both sexes, which are symptoms of multiple personality.

In my post of February 17, 2014, I quoted scholars Maria DiBattista, Hermione Lee, and Louise DeSalvo on Woolf’s multiple personality issues. I would like to add Harvena Richter, whose book has a chapter, “A Multiplicity of Self,” which discusses Woolf’s various methods in her writing “of showing multiple personality” (1, p. 123).

In contrast, when I google “Virginia Woolf Mental Illness,” the consensus appears to be bipolar disorder (manic-depression), which is discussed at book length by Thomas C. Caramagno (2). But a major flaw in that argument is Woolf’s multiplicity of selves, each of which has a sense of its own personhood, and which come in both sexes. These are not symptoms of bipolar disorder, but of multiple personality.

1. Harvena Richter. Virginia Woolf: The Inward Voyage. Princeton University Press, 1970.

2. Thomas C. Caramagno. The Flight of the Mind: Virginia Woolf’s Art and Manic-Depressive Illness. University of California Press, 1992.