Nora Roberts’ (post 5) Eve Dallas in Historical Context: Incest victim, solving a murder about incest, when incest and multiple personality were associated.

Naked in Death, the first of more than forty novels featuring police lieutenant Eve Dallas, was published in 1995. The novel highlights the fact that Eve Dallas had been a victim of incest in childhood. And she solves a murder that had been committed to cover up multigenerational incest: a woman had been blackmailing her grandfather, threatening to expose his crime of incest, so he kills her.

In the 1990s, incest, traditionally a hidden crime, and multiple personality, intrinsically a hidden disorder, had come out of the closet. In fact, discovering incest as the hidden cause of psychological problems had become so popular that some misguided therapists were over-diagnosing it. And since incest had become associated in the popular mind with multiple personality, the backlash against false accusations of incest had become a backlash against multiple personality as well.

In any case, the point is, when Naked in Death, a novel about an incest victim who solves a murder about incest, was published in 1995, incest and multiple personality were associated, not only as a clinical fact, but in the popular mind. And so anyone who reads the story of Eve Dallas without thinking of multiple personality is taking it out of historical context.

The fact that the novel emphasizes and highlights incest, but does not even mention multiple personality as a possibility, is curious, considering the historical context noted above. Perhaps, for the author, multiple personality was too sensitive a subject.

“Naked in Death” and “Seduction in Death” by J. D. Robb (Nora Roberts) (post 4): Eve Dallas’s Dissociative Fugue and Probable Multiple Personality.

Police lieutenant Eve Dallas, who, in the first of this series of over forty novels (1) is thirty years old, had been found abandoned at age eight in the city of Dallas, with no memory of her own name or of anything else about her first eight years. She was given the name Eve Dallas, placed in foster care, and eventually, at about age twenty, joined the New York City police department.

Remarkably, whenever this background is discussed (and it is repeatedly) even Dr. Mira, the highly regarded police psychiatrist (1, p. 133), does not call it what it was: a dissociative fugue, which is when, after psychologically traumatic experience, people wander or travel away from where they are known, and have amnesia for who they are and what their life had been. [Search “dissociative fugue” for prior posts.]

Dissociative fugue is one of a group of psychological conditions called dissociative disorders, which includes dissociative identity disorder (multiple personality). So if someone has had a dissociative fugue, there is a good chance that they have multiple personality, especially if they’ve had extensive psychological trauma in childhood, which was the case for Eve Dallas (1, p. 133).

In short, the protagonist of this series of novels has been given a backstory suggestive of multiple personality, but the author (as represented by the narrator and characters) does not know it, and so there is no effort to provide the reader with relevant information, such as whether Eve Dallas has identity changes and memory gaps (the narrator would have to say so or another character would have to ask her). 

Nevertheless, inadvertently, there are some indications suggestive of multiple personality. For example, at one point Eve says, “My father raped me.” And the narrator adds: “She heard herself say it. The shock of it, hearing her own voice say the words, mirrored in her eyes.” Now, there are two ways to interpret this; 1. that she had often thought of it, but was surprised at her impulsivity to say it out loud to other people, or 2. that she had had dreams and flashes of memory about this, but had not known there was a part of herself (an alternate personality) who had a clear memory of it. It is a clinically known fact that people with multiple personality sometimes have a subjective sense that they say or do things that does not feel like them saying or doing it (alternate personalities can sometimes pull strings from behind the scenes). This is why multiple personality used to be confused with being possessed.

The other main character, Roarke, thinks Eve Dallas has two distinct personalities, as, for example, when he says, “Lieutenant Dallas wouldn’t be afraid of me, even if Eve might” (1, p. 153).

Like many people with multiple personality, Eve Dallas sometimes hears the voices of alternate personalities in her head. One is a personality based on her deceased father, so she must have had this alternate personality from before she was eight years old. As she is in the process of arresting a criminal: “So what? a voice whispered in her ear. Her father’s voice. Another’s coming. Another always is” (2, p. 304).

In multiple personality, it is not uncommon to have some opposite-sex alternate personalities. The alternate personality related to her father was probably not the only one. For example, Eve Dallas and Roarke were having a playful physical fight, and at one point she says, “Just be careful who you call a female, ace” (2, p. 179). Indeed, J. D. Robb’s decision to have police subordinates address their superiors, like Lieutenant Dallas, as “Sir” makes me wonder whether J. D. Robb thinks of Eve Dallas’s police personality as male (as opposed to her off-duty and romantic personalities, which are clearly female). But I don’t think most readers would like that interpretation.

1. J. D. Robb (Nora Roberts). Naked in Death. New York, Berkley Books, 1995.

2. J. D. Robb (Nora Roberts). Seduction in Death. New York, Berkley Books, 2001.

Nora Roberts (post 3) writes over forty novels in which both protagonists—Eve Dallas and Roarke—are survivors of child abuse and don’t know their own names.

“Eve Dallas” is a pseudonym. It is the name she was given at age eight when she was found in Dallas and had amnesia. Roarke does not know his first name (and there is no record of his ever having one). Nora Roberts—already a pseudonym for Eleanor Robertson—writes this series as J. D. Robb. Both Eve Dallas and Roarke had been abused in childhood by their fathers.

The only psychological condition that is defined by its having identity issues as a result childhood trauma is multiple personality, which is mentioned only once (so far) in this “romantic suspense,” police detective, series. It is mentioned in Seduction in Death (1), but the way it is mentioned is peculiar, because, seemingly, there is no good reason to raise the issue.

In the course of trying to find out who murdered several women, the question arises as to whether it was one man, more then one man, or one man with multiple personality. Roarke raises the possibility that the murderer might have “different personalities” (1, p. 95). The police psychologist says it is possible: “While multiple personality syndrome is rare, except in fiction, it does exist.” Eve Dallas says, “I don’t think this is MPS. I read up on it last night” (1, p. 133).

But the reader knows it was two men. And it seems very unlikely that the police would consider something they think of as such a remote possibility. So why, if it is not used as a red herring for the reader, and is implausible to the police, is multiple personality brought up by Roarke, confirmed to exist by the psychologist, and read up about by Eve Dallas?

J. D. Robb must be telling the reader something about these characters, perhaps also about herself.

Note added later the same day: In a previous post, I quoted the author, at a book-signing, referring to J. D. Robb as a bitch. But elsewhere she has said that the J and D stand for the names of her two sons, Jason and Dan, so it is not clear whether the J. D. Robb pseudonym—or, in my terminology, NAP (narrative alternate personality)—is female or male.

1. J. D. Robb (Nora Roberts). Seduction in Death. New York, Berkley Books, 2001.

NAP and CAP: “Narrator (or Narrative) Alternate Personality” and “Character Alternate Personality” say not only what they do, but what they are.

Narrators tell stories and characters take part in them, but where do narrators and characters come from and what are they?

Traditionally, narrators and characters have been thought of, not as alternate personalities, which, to fill a need, as in multiple personality, arise within a writer and have minds of their own, but as created constructs, intelligently designed and imagined.

However, my impression from what writers have said about their creative process is that their narrators and characters tend to arise more often like alternate personalities and less often by intelligent design.

“I Never Promised You a Rose Garden” by Joanne Greenberg (post 5): Positives (Cure), Negatives (Misdiagnosis), and the Author’s Afterword.

Positives

Age: The patient’s multiple personality appears to have begun as a way to cope with surgery (to remove a urinary tract “tumor”) at age five. So by the time she was psychiatrically hospitalized at age fifteen, she had had multiple personality for ten years. However, since most people with multiple personality don’t get helpful treatment until they are over thirty, if ever, this patient got help at a relatively young age, when the condition was less entrenched and easier to cure.

Doctor: Her psychiatrist, Dr. Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, was known for treating psychotic patients with psychotherapy (in preference to the crude biological treatments available around 1950). She is superb at establishing a doctor-patient therapeutic alliance. Her patient must have felt very safe to have revealed her inner world, its characters, and secret language.

Successful Outcome: After several years of psychiatric hospitalization and several more years of outpatient treatment, Joanne Greenberg has felt and functioned very well for all these many years.

They say you can’t argue with success, but I will anyway:

Negatives

Misdiagnosis: The psychiatrist—having never asked the patient if she had a history of memory gaps, losing time, and things happening that nobody else could have done, but she didn’t remember doing them—did not know that her patient had this symptom, which is seen in multiple personality, but not in schizophrenia. It is caused by one personality's having amnesia for the times that other personalities have been in control. And as seen in quotes from the text in a previous post, the patient had had many such experiences for many years. But patients usually don’t volunteer this information unless specifically asked.

Misunderstanding Patient: The psychiatrist, not knowing about the multiple personality, did not know which personality she was talking to at any given time. Since the typical host or regular personality does not know the secrets of the other personalities and their inner world, then the secrets being told about the inner world, etc., were probably being told by one or more of the alternate personalities (who usually do not identify themselves, and prefer to remain incognito, unless they know that the person they are speaking to knows what is going on).

Residual Symptoms?: At various times throughout the story, the patient is said to still feel the presence of the “tumor,” which had been surgically removed at age five. I don’t know if this was discussed in therapy sessions, but if it was, what would the psychiatrist have made of it? Without knowing about the multiple personality, would the psychiatrist have thought that there might be a five-year-old alternate personality, who was frozen in time, to when the tumor was still actually there, and that this problem might be resolved by working with that personality (for example, helping her age-progress to when the tumor was gone).

In short, there might be certain issues that never get entirely resolved if they are not addressed in the way they are found in the patient’s multiple personality. Perhaps the “tumor” was resolved in some other way (the child-aged alternate personality might have spontaneously age-progressed), but there might have been other issues that were not resolved. Multiple personality can still be present without its causing problems, which is what I mean by its “normal version” in the title of this blog.

In any case, here, the practical positives appear to far outweigh any theoretical negatives, so let the last words come from:

Joanne Greenberg’s Afterword

“There are some comic elements in all of this. Now and then, I’ve had to defend my right to have been schizophrenic and to have recovered…I’ve heard the causes of my illness hijacked by people for use in their own agendas…and some are worth a laugh. The hard truth is that we don’t know enough about the brain’s capacities to do any more than speculate on cause or cure. I don’t know what caused my illness—not really, or how, exactly, it was cured. I do know what helped, and who was there to help” (1, pp. 290-291).

1. Joanne Greenberg. I Never Promised You a Rose Garden [1964]. With a new Afterword by the author. New York, Holt Paperbacks, 2009.

Josephine Tey, Gordon Daviot, F. Craigie Howe, Elizabeth MacKintosh (post 3): Jennifer Morag Henderson says, “She made many lives for herself…”

“As Josephine Tey and Gordon Daviot enjoyed themselves immensely in London, Beth [Elizabeth MacKintosh] made a reappearance as well…However, the different worlds—family, and theatrical and literary—did not overlap…Beth lived in an extraordinary space between two completely different worlds…” (1, pp. 6-7).

“Each of the letters from Beth to Dodie is signed ‘Gordon’, rather than ‘Beth’…One intriguing reference…talks about Daviot's ‘other half’, who is not encouraging when Daviot comes up with new ideas for plays. Beth MacKintosh sometimes comes up with new ideas, but the ‘other half’ of her personality, Gordon Daviot, rejects them. This same idea, of an inner contradictory voice, is present in the Josephine Tey novels for both Alan Grant and Brat Farrar, while Miss Pym talks about ‘her other half […] which stood watching her with critical eyes…’ ” (1, pp. 212-213).

“In 1945, Gordon Daviot decided to try out a third pseudonym. This third name was never revealed during her lifetime…In 1945, at the same time as she was carrying out negotiations…for Gordon Daviot's The Little Dry Thorn, Beth MacKintosh was also negotiating…for Cornelia, by F. Craigie Howe” (1, pp. 239-240).

“Elizabeth MacKintosh was Gordon Daviot the playwright and Josephine Tey the novelist, but she was also Beth…She made many lives for herself…” (1, p. 354).

1. Jennifer Morag Henderson. Josephine Tey: A Life. Scotland, Sandstone Press, 2015.

Joanne Greenberg (“I Never Promised You a Rose Garden”) post 4: typical multiple personality with good memory, not psychotic, childhood trauma, writes novels.

Excellent Memory

Aside from her multiple personality memory gaps (her regular personality’s amnesia for the periods of time that an alternate personality was in control), Deborah (protagonist of I Never Promised You a Rose Garden) had an excellent memory.

She had to have had a good memory to remember the details of her inner world and its secret language. Also, as she mentions on page 254, she had memorized Shakespeare’s Hamlet from beginning to end.

I have previously described this paradox of the memory of people with multiple personality—memory gaps in a person who otherwise has an excellent memory—in regard to the absent-mindedness of Mark Twain.

Not Psychotic

Psychiatrists define psychosis as impaired reality-testing; that is, a person’s inability to test the validity of their own thinking by comparing it with objective reality. If you hear a voice, but you know other people don’t hear it, and that it is a product of your own mind, then you have intact reality-testing and you are not psychotic.

Deborah’s regular personality was in touch with reality.

Childhood Trauma

Multiple personality originates as a way to cope with childhood trauma. The reason that some children cope in this way is that having imaginary companions is a normal tendency in the psychology of childhood. Deborah’s alternate personalities originated to help her cope with the trauma of surgery at age five.

Novelist

Joanne Greenberg, once she was not mentally ill—her multiple personality was no longer causing distress and dysfunction—lived happily ever after, leading a full life, writing novels.

“I Never Promised You a Rose Garden” by Joanne Greenberg (post 3): Memory gaps and changes in behavior indicate multiple personality, not schizophrenia.

“Deborah had known for years and years that there was more than a little the matter…the times of blindness, intense pain, lameness, terror, and the inability to remember anything at all…” (1, p. 18).

“For many years words had come out of her mouth for which her mind could not remember giving the order” (1, p. 24).

“Sometimes she even forgot the English language” (1, p. 25).

“Like a dybbuk or the voice of a possession, the curse proclaimed itself from Deborah’s body and her mouth” (1, p. 46).

“At one time…the gods of Yr [Deborah’s secret inner world] had been companions—secret, princely sharers of her loneliness…Its gods were laughing, golden personages…like guardian spirits [protector personalities]…[But] The Censor had assumed the role of tyrant…Once her guardian, the Censor had turned against her [a protector personality evolved into a persecutor personality]…“And [her secret world] has a language of its own?” the doctor asked…”Yes,” Deborah said. “It is a secret language…” (1, pp. 52-53).

“Anterrabae and Lactamaeon were with her and so were the Censor and the Collect. Amid the noise of their conflicting demands and curses, she suddenly realized that she had lost another day somehow…” (1, p. 60).

“People would come to me and say, ‘…after what you did,…’ or ‘…after what you said,…even I won’t defend you anymore…’ I never knew what it was that I had done or said…I kept having to ‘apologize,’ but I never knew for what or why. Once I greeted my best friend and she turned from me. When I asked why, she said, ‘After what you did?’ She never spoke to me again, and I never found out what had happened” (1, p. 67).

“Deborah did not know what look she was carrying in front of which self…” (1, p. 103).

“Deborah’s body was still at the other side of the bed, but her self was not with her body” (1, p. 161).

A doctor asks Deborah why she needs to burn herself.

“It seems necessary,” answered a representative of the volcano [a personality of her inner world, not Deborah’s regular self] (1, p. 170).

She asks a doctor how long she has been in isolation/restraint.

“Oh, three days or four.”

She became aware of aching in her hands and aches along her arms and shoulders. She became terrified. “Did I hit anybody? Did I hurt anybody?

“No.” He smiled a little. “You were having quite a go at the doors and windows, though” (1, p. 173).

“When her vision cleared, it was only enough to see and hear as if through a keyhole. She was aware that she was shouting and that attendants were in the room and that the walls of the room were covered with Yri words and sentences [Yri is the language of her secret inner world]…The words were written in pencil and blood… ‘Where is what you used to scratch this?” [a member of the hospital staff asked] ‘Recreat,’ Deborah[’s alternate personality] said. ‘Recreat xangoran, temr e xangoranan. Naza e fango xangoranan. Inai dum. Ageai dum.’ (Remember me. Remember me in anger, fear me in bitter anger…)” (1, p. 188).

“But Deborah was still frightened. Her facial expressions were a mystery to her, one that had never been solved. In memories whose meaning was still dark to her, she counted years and years of enemies made in ways which she could never explain. Part of it had been the look—must have been the look—some expression not hers which she had been wearing, a voice and a doer not herself and capable of turning allies into persecutors” (1, p. 204).

Comment: Deborah’s psychiatrist, who diagnosed her as having schizophrenia, was well aware of her secret inner world, various of its personalities, and the secret language. However, there is no indication that the psychiatrist was ever aware of Deborah’s long history of memory gaps, which is a cardinal symptom of multiple personality, but not a symptom of schizophrenia. Search “memory gaps” and “mental status” in this blog for posts that explain these diagnostic issues.

1. Joanne Greenberg. I Never Promised You a Rose Garden [1964]. With a new Afterword by the author. New York, Holt Paperbacks, 2009.

Joanne Greenberg, author of “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden,” who never had anti-psychotic medication, appears briefly in an anti-medication video.

She was diagnosed as having schizophrenia, but her treatment was in the early 1950s, before modern anti-psychotic medication was available, which was fortunate for her, because she was misdiagnosed.

I am providing a link to this video, not because of its straw-man argument, which I find annoying, but because, if you plan to read the book, you might like to see what the author looks like. She is the woman with white hair. She makes several brief appearances.

“Take These Broken Wings: Recovery from Schizophrenia Without Medication,” a documentary film by Daniel Mackler, 2014.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPfKc-TknWU

Dementia Praecox, Schizophrenia, Dissociation, Multiple Personality: Implications for Joanne Greenberg’s “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden”

“The Kraepelinian dichotomy is the division of the major endogenous psychoses into the disease concepts of dementia praecox, which was reformulated as schizophrenia by Eugen Bleuler by 1908, and manic-depressive psychosis, which has now been reconceived as bipolar disorder. This division was formally introduced in the sixth edition of Emil Kraepelin's psychiatric textbook…in 1899…

“…psychogenic theories of dementia praecox dominated the American scene by 1911. In 1925 Bleuler's schizophrenia rose in prominence as an alternative to Kraepelin's dementia praecox. When Freudian perspectives became influential in American psychiatry in the 1920s schizophrenia became an attractive alternative concept. Bleuler corresponded with Freud and was connected to Freud's psychoanalytic movement, and the inclusion of Freudian interpretations of the symptoms of schizophrenia in his publications on the subject, as well as those of C.G. Jung, eased the adoption of his broader version of dementia praecox (schizophrenia) in America over Kraepelin's narrower and prognostically more negative one….

“The term ‘schizophrenia’ was first applied by American alienists and neurologists in private practice by 1909 and officially in institutional settings in 1913, but it took many years to catch on. It is first mentioned in The New York Times in 1925. Until 1952 the terms dementia praecox and schizophrenia were used interchangeably in American psychiatry, with occasional use of the hybrid terms ‘dementia praecox (schizophrenia)’ or ‘schizophrenia (dementia praecox)’…” (Wikipedia).

However, beginning in the 1970s, although the name “schizophrenia” has been retained, it has been more rigorously defined, back to the kind of cases connoted by “dementia praecox”; that is, cases with a young adult onset (praecox) that involve a biologically-based (endogenous) deterioration in coherent thinking (dementia).

What, then, has happened with the cases no longer considered schizophrenia; cases whose delusional and hallucinatory symptoms seem more psychological, even imaginative; cases in which the person has complex thoughts rather than dementia; cases that may do better with psychotherapy than medication as the main treatment modality? These cases have increasingly come to be seen as psychotic-like presentations of dissociative defenses rooted in childhood trauma: complex cases of dissociative identity disorder (multiple personality).

For an historical review of schizophrenia and dissociation, including Joanne Greenberg’s I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, please read the following brief article:

Karen Gainer. “Dissociation and Schizophrenia: An Historical Review of Conceptual Development and Relevant Treatment Approaches.” Dissociation, December 1994, pp. 261-271.

http://www.empty-memories.nl/dis_94/Gainer_94.pdf

Nora Roberts (post 2): In The New Yorker profile, was she joking when she said that J.D. Robb was “offended” by Nora’s popularity, and that J.D. is “a bitch”?

If it were a joke, it would have been a multiple personality joke, since its humor would have been based on talking about J.D. Robb as though she were a separate person, who could be envious of Nora and bitchy about it.

And if you think it was a joke, you would have to explain why Nora Roberts would be making jokes about J.D. Robb. Is Nora Roberts a humorist? And of all kinds of humor, why would she be making multiple personality jokes that disparage her very successful pseudonym?

Judge for yourself what type of person she is in interviews:

http://video.mpt.tv/video/2312264480/

What I see is neither Nora Roberts, the writer, nor J.D. Robb, the writer, nor a humorist, but a charming host personality (search “host personality” in this blog), whose job it is to socialize and do interviews.  At least, that is my initial impression. What’s yours?

However, the question arises as to why the host personality would have called J.D. a bitch (since it the host personality’s job to be nice). I would guess that it was not the host personality who called J.D. a bitch, but a rival of J.D., who took over temporarily to add her two cents.

When Eleanor Marie Robertson—pseudonyms Nora Roberts, J.D. Robb, Jill March, and Sarah Hardesty—does book-signings, who signs Nora Roberts?

During a book-signing described in The New Yorker (1):

A girl approached carrying a souvenir tote bag. “Everybody’s reading Nora,” it said.

“J.D. is offended, but I’m not,” Roberts said. She added, in a stage whisper, “She’s a bitch, anyway.”

Now if, psychologically speaking, it had really been Nora Roberts doing the book-signing, it would not have made sense for her to say “but I’m not,” because it would be assumed that Nora Roberts would not be offended by a tote bag that said everyone was reading her books.

So if, psychologically speaking, it was neither Nora Roberts nor J.D. Robb doing the book-signing, who was it? Someone who thinks J.D. Robb is a bitch, anyway.

1. Lauren Collins. “Real Romance: How Nora Roberts became America’s most popular novelist.” The New Yorker, June 22, 2009.

Jane E. Brody’s “Deeper Understanding of Gender,” 6/14/16 New York Times, on being transgender, is illustrated with a picture that depicts multiple personality.

Yesterday’s online version of Brody’s article, “Being Transgender as a Fact of Nature,” is accompanied by a photo of male-to-female transsexual, Christine Jorgensen. But today’s print version of the article, “A Deeper Understanding of Gender,” is accompanied by a picture of a man who is looking at himself in the mirror and sees a woman. The latter illustration is a mistake. It depicts the subjective experience of persons with multiple personality, not the subjective experience of transgender persons.

The reason that a transgender person with a male body, but a subjective sense of being female, might seek sex-change surgery, is that he does NOT see a female when he looks in a mirror, and he wants the sex-change surgery to change what he sees in the mirror to match his subjective sexual identity.

However, persons with multiple personality may sometimes see the image of one of their alternate personalities when they look in the mirror. So if a man with multiple personality has a female alternate personality, he may sometimes see that female image when he looks in the mirror. And that is what is inadvertently illustrated by the picture accompanying the print version of Brody’s article.

For further discussion, search “mirror” and “mirrors” in this blog.

“The Daughter of Time” by Josephine Tey (post 2): Thoughts vs. Voices, Simple vs. Complex Dissociation (Memory Gaps), and Multiple Personality.

This novel has one instance of the protagonist’s hearing from his other self. Inspector Grant gets a tip from “a voice in his mind” who says, “But Thomas More was Henry the Eighth” (1, p. 80), meaning that Thomas More belonged to the reign of Henry the Eighth, not the reign Richard the Third.

People without multiple personality have the experience that a thought occurs to them, not that a voice speaks to them. Hearing a voice implies a second thinker. Since the person’s mind is split into two thinkers, hearing a voice is a dissociative (split mind) experience.

Another example of dissociation in this novel is described as a common experience of actors (Tey wrote plays under a different pseudonym) when their plays have a long run:

     “I haven’t come to stay, my dear, I’m on my way to the theatre. It’s matinée day, God help me. Tea trays and morons. And we’ve gotten to the frightful stage when the lines have ceased to have any meaning at all for us. I don’t think this play is ever coming off. It’s going to be like those New York ones that run by the decade instead of by the year. It’s too frightening. One’s mind just won’t stay on the thing. Geoffrey dried up in the middle of the second act last night. His eyes nearly popped out of his head. I thought for a moment he was having a stroke. He said afterwards that he had no recollection of anything that happened between his entrance and the point where he came to and found himself half-way through the act.”

     “A black-out, you mean?”

     “No. Oh, no. Just being an automaton. Saying the lines and doing the business and thinking of something else all the time.”

     “If all reports are true that’s no unusual matter where actors are concerned” (1, p. 23).

The actress telling this anecdote interprets her fellow actor’s experience as an example of behavior that is so well learned that it can can be carried out automatically, without being conscious of it, while the person thinks of something else.

A similar experience might be carrying on a conversation while walking or driving: you are so engrossed in the conversation, and walking or driving is so well-learned and automatic, that you haven’t noticed how far you have walked or driven.

Does it matter how complex the “unconscious” (dissociated) behavior is? If you are a very experienced novelist, could you carry on a conversation while you are writing your latest novel, and, after carrying on the conversation for an hour, find, to your surprise, that you have written another chapter of your novel?

Is acting in a long-running play an automatic, well-learned thing like walking, so that a person can do it using lower, non-thinking parts of the brain, while higher levels of the brain do real thinking? Or would the actor need two personalities, two thinkers, one thinking of the play while the other thinks of other things?

1. Josephine Tey. The Daughter of Time [1951]. New York, Scribner Paperback Fiction, 1995.

Josephine Tey (pseudonym), author of detective novel voted number one in Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time list of British Crime Writers’ Association.

“Josephine Tey and Gordon Daviot were the two pseudonyms used by the dramatist and novelist Elizabeth Mackintosh…born in Inverness, Scotland, in 1897” (1, p. 13).

“The Daughter of Time is a 1951 detective novel by Josephine Tey…In 1990 it was voted number one in The Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time list compiled by the British Crime Writers' Association. In 1995 it was voted number four in The Top 100 Mystery Novels of All Time list compiled by the Mystery Writers of America” (2).

“Shunning publicity completely, Miss Mackintosh gave no press interviews” (1. p. 14).

“If the themes of her writings can serve as a guide, and they are the only guide available, Miss Mackintosh saw life as deceptive, unreliable and emotionally dangerous. It is foolish, she says, to believe in anything or anyone for nothing is what it seems. The guilty are usually innocent…; the wise, foolish; and the obvious deduction inevitably wrong. Appearances are generally deceiving. A brother is not a brother but a cousin, a man is not a man but a woman, an innocent girl is in fact a nasty-minded trollop” (1, p. 17).

Inspector “Grant, like Tey’s other protagonists, indulges in orgies of self-blame and endless arguments with his ‘other self ’ " (1, p. 56).

“In Brat Farrar, Tey uses an elaborate system of doubling…The ‘other sides’ that argue with Inspector Grant and Lucy Pym are in this novel personified as real characters. Farrar argues with his criminally inclined ‘voice’ only to discover it personified in the nearly identical murderer, Simon. Each character in the novel has a double, that is, someone like him in position (and in three instances physically identical) but usually opposite in character” (1, p. 108).

“In The Daughter of Time Tey uses a device never successfully approached by her contemporaries. She solves an historical mystery without directly portraying any of the characters involved. It is this ability to create suspense without action, and to establish memorable characters with realistic dialogue that accounts for Tey’s continuing popularity. She spans the worlds of the vicarage and the hard, city detective, creating, especially in her later works, compelling novels of personal conflict and mental self-torture. She provides the reader and herself with a bastion of predictability and surety in a world where all appearances deceive…” (1, p. 184).

1. Sandra Roy. Josephine Tey. Boston, Twayne Publishers, 1980.

2. Wikipedia.

Who Gets to Be Angry? (Men) Who Has to Smile? (Women): Feminists keep asking, because they don’t understand facial anatomy and makeup.

This post is prompted by Roxane Gay’s essay, “Who Gets to Be Angry?” in today’s New York Times.

An important part of the answer is facial anatomy. On the average, women’s eyebrows are higher above the eyes than men’s eyebrows. And since the facial expression of anger involves lowering the eyebrows, the facial expression of anger looks more natural on men.

Not only are women’s eyebrows, on average, higher, but many women tweeze the lower edge of their eyebrows to make them look even higher than they are naturally. That is, women, who naturally look less angry, groom themselves to exaggerate this small natural difference.

There is also a sexual difference in facial features relative to smiling. On average, women have more plumpness in the part of the cheek that plumps up when a person smiles: which is, in effect, a built-in smile. And women exaggerate this anatomical difference when they use makeup to enhance or mimic “high cheekbones.”

Of course, the subject of anger is more complicated than facial anatomy. Another issue is the distinction between the emotions of anger and outrage. Both emotions indicate that the person does not like something, but the facial expression of anger has lowered eyebrows, while the facial expression of outrage has raised eyebrows.

I thought this subject might be of interest to writers in regard to their description of characters and their character’s emotions.

Is facial anatomy destiny? It is, as long as women choose to use makeup to exaggerate these natural differences, which they probably will continue to do, because it makes them more attractive.

Steven Spielberg, in commencement speech at Harvard, says he hears voices: the loud voice of his conscience and the whisper of his intuition.

Quoted in today’s New York Times:

“And I want to be clear that your intuition is different from your conscience. They work in tandem, but here’s the distinction: Your conscience shouts, ‘Here’s what you should do,’ while your intuition whispers, ‘Here’s what you could do.’ Listen to that voice that tells you what you could do. Nothing will define your character more than that.”

People who do not hear voices assume that such talk is only a metaphor. But in this blog, when artists say they hear voices, they are taken at their word.

Search “voice” and “voices” in this blog for discussions of this recurrent issue.

Not Just a Literary Gimmick: Murderers with Multiple Personality in Joyce Carol Oates’ “Jack of Spades,” Vladimir Nabokov’s “Despair,” and Real Life

As discussed in previous posts, Oates’ and Nabokov’s novels have characters with multiple personality—the disorder, not the normal version—who commit murder.

Nabokov’s character also happens to mention that he has twenty-five different handwritings:

“I have exactly twenty-five handwritings, the best (i.e., those I use the most readily) being as follows: a round diminutive one with a pleasant plumpness about its curves, so that every word looks like a newly baked fancy-cake; then a fast cursive, sharp and nasty, the scribble of a hunchback in a hurry, with no dearth of abbreviations; then a suicide’s hand, every letter a noose, every comma a trigger; then the one I prize most: big, legible, firm and absolutely impersonal…It was in such a hand that I began writing this book now offered to the reader; soon, however, my pen ran amok: this book is written in all my twenty-five hands mixed together…”

Do these things happen in real life? Yes, they do:

Objective Documentation of Child Abuse and Dissociation in 12 Murderers With Dissociative Identity Disorder [Multiple Personality Disorder] Dorothy Otnow Lewis, M.D., et al., American Journal of Psychiatry 1997; 154:1703-1710

Abstract

“OBJECTIVE: The skepticism regarding the existence of dissociative identity disorder as well as the abuse that engenders it persists for lack of objective documentation. This is doubly so for the disorder in murderers because of issues of suspected malingering. This article presents objective verification of both dissociative symptoms and severe abuse during childhood in a series of adult murderers with dissociative identity disorder. METHOD: This study consisted of a review of the clinical records of 11 men and one woman with DSM-IV-defined dissociative identity disorder who had committed murder. Data were gathered from medical, psychiatric, social service, school, military, and prison records and from records of interviews with subjects' family members and others. Handwriting samples were also examined. Data were analyzed qualitatively. RESULTS: Signs and symptoms of dissociative identity disorder in childhood and adulthood were corroborated independently and from several sources in all 12 cases; objective evidence of severe abuse was obtained in 11 cases. The subjects had amnesia for most of the abuse and underreported it. Marked changes in writing style and/or signatures were documented in 10 cases. CONCLUSIONS: This study establishes, once and for all, the linkage between early severe abuse and dissociative identity disorder. Further, the data demonstrate that the disorder can be distinguished from malingering and from other disorders. The study shows that it is possible, with great effort, to obtain objective evidence of both the symptoms of dissociative identity disorder and the abuse that engenders it.”

Joyce Carol Oates’ “Jack of Spades”: novelist and pseudonym are alternate personalities—one even tries to kill the other—but reviewers miss the diagnosis.

Indeed, the novel ends as the novelist is about to commit suicide, since it is the only way he can think of to kill his alternate personality.

And the protagonist’s multiple personality has been blatant throughout the novel. Andrew, a novelist, often hears his pseudonymous personality, Jack of Spades, as a voice in his head. Jack often speaks out loud, alternating with Andrew, which sounds to Andrew’s wife like two persons in conversation behind the closed door of Andrew’s study. And Jack often makes Andrew do things that are out-of-character.

Andrew also has the typical memory gaps of multiple personality, caused when one personality does not remember something that happened when the other personality was out. For example, Andrew finds himself holding a drink that he has no memory of pouring (Jack did). Or Andrew’s wife has definitely told him about his father’s failing health, but Andrew has no memory of those conversations.

The writing processes of Andrew and Jack are also quite different. Andrew writes slowly, struggling with outlines, etc., while Jack writes fast, leaving Andrew with amnesia for most of Jack’s writing process.

In short, the multiple personality in this novel is not subtle. It is the main business.

Why, then, do reviews of this novel fail to mention multiple personality, and speak nonspecifically about the novelist’s “descent into madness”?

“Jack of Spades is a fast-paced read filled with high drama and the

expertly-rendered delineation of a writer’s descent into madness” (2).

“While the mild-mannered [Andrew] Rush is merely indignant at being accused, Jack of Spades wants revenge, and so begins his slow descent into madness” (3).

The reason is that unless a novel itself refers to disturbed behavior as multiple personality, reviewers often fail to distinguish between schizophrenia and multiple personality, and call any disturbed behavior “madness.” But in the psychiatric diagnostic manual (DSM-5), schizophrenia and multiple personality (called “dissociative identity disorder”) are completely different, and found in two completely separate chapters. Schizophrenia is a psychosis. Multiple personality, a dissociative disorder, is not. I have discussed the differences in past posts.

Why doesn’t this novel refer to its obvious portrayal of multiple personality as multiple personality? As noted in my previous post on Joyce Carol Oates, she tends to think of having an alternate personality as ordinary psychology. And perhaps she, like most reviewers, tends to think of any disturbed behavior as “madness,” failing to distinguish between psychosis and dissociation.

On a lighter note, I think this novel only poses as a tale of suspense. To me, it seems like it was probably meant as an inside joke among novelists, especially the parts where it refers to Stephen King and other male bestselling novelists by name, and implies that they all steal their ideas from one unknown, unpublished, female writer.

If you take the title, “Jack of Spades,” and change Jack to Joke and Spade to Shovel, then you have a joke about how novelists dig up their ideas. This joke would appeal to novelists, because they are often not sure where their ideas come from.

1. Joyce Carol Oates. Jack of Spades: A Tale of Suspense. New York, The Mysterious Press, 2015.

2. Anderson, Eric K. (2015) "Review of Joyce Carol Oates's Jack of Spades," Bearing Witness: Joyce Carol Oates Studies: Vol. 2, Article 4. http://repository.usfca.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1010&context=jcostudies

3. https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/joyce-carol-oates/jack-of-spades/

Multiple Personality in Raymond Chandler’s “The Big Sleep”: Philip Marlowe meets Sexual Carmen and Murderous Carmen, but thinks it is epilepsy.

At first, I thought Raymond Chandler was hinting that Carmen Sternwood had multiple personality, when he had her refer to herself in the third-person: “I like you,” she said. “Carmen likes you a lot” (1, p. 89).

I was more convinced that this private detective, first-person narrator, Philip Marlowe, knew that Carmen had multiple personality, when he described her as switching from giggling, sexual, thumb-sucking Carmen to hissing, blank-eyed, mechanical Carmen (1, pp. 154-157).

But, remarkably, at the end of the novel, when Carmen asks Marlowe for shooting lessons, takes him to an isolated place, and then she proceeds to shoot him in the chest, again and again, at close range—she didn’t know he had loaded the gun with blanks—and she then has amnesia for the episode (1, pp. 216-220), he and her older sister conclude that it was due to epilepsy, since she had murdered and had spells before.

The evidence for their diagnosis of epilepsy was that after Carmen saw that Marlowe wasn’t shot, and he ridiculed her attempt by saying, “My, but you’re cute” (1, p. 220), she started to shake, dropped the gun, appeared unconscious, clenched her mouth (like she might bite her tongue), and wet herself (urinary incontinence).

Now, she may or may not have had epilepsy in addition to multiple personality. You can’t say definitively unless you have EEG confirmation. And although it is often said that only people with true epilepsy would bite their tongue and wet themselves, it is a myth. Self-injury and incontinence also happen in psychogenic seizures (2).

In any case, it doesn’t really matter whether she had epilepsy, because epilepsy can’t account for her socially complex, goal-directed, murderous behavior that preceded the alleged seizure, and her amnesia for that whole murderous episode, not for only the brief time of the alleged seizure; whereas, amnesia for the whole attempted murder would be typical if she had now switched away from her murderous alternate personality.

How did Chandler understand his descriptions of Carmen’s dramatically different, giggling/sexual and hissing personalities. He didn’t seem to think that the latter was just an ordinary reaction to frustration of the former. He apparently felt that Carmen had some sort of serious mental disturbance. My guess is that he knew someone who had seizure-like behavior as one symptom of their multiple personality, which is relatively common (3, p. 66).

In short, The Big Sleep is one more example of how unintentional multiple personality is present in literature, unrecognized by either the author or most readers. Its unintentional presence suggests that it reflects something about the author’s own psychology.

1. Raymond Chandler. The Big Sleep [1939]. New York, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, 1992.

2. Peguero E, et al. Self-injury and incontinence in psychogenic seizures. Epilepsia. 1995 Jun;36(6):586-91.

3. Frank W. Putnam. Diagnosis and Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder. New York, The Guilford Press, 1989.

Namelessness in the title, and of the main character, in Bulgakov’s “Master and Margarita” (post 7), probably reflect the author’s multiple personality.

My analysis of this novel in the previous six posts may seem stupid to most people, who will say I have entirely missed its magic, humor, philosophy, politics, satire, and romance.

In my defense, I can only say that the namelessness of the Master—who is not only a title character, but is referred to by the title of Chapter XIII as “the hero”—is the single most salient fact, that any credible analysis must address it, and mine does.

Why is this character called “the Master”? His own explanation, “I no longer have a name. I gave it up, just as I’ve given up everything else in life,” makes no sense. It is as if Donald Trump had said, “I’m nothing. I no longer have a name. I gave it up, just call me the President.”

Since some novelists say that when their characters come to them, they already have a name, perhaps this character came to Bulgakov already called “the Master” (an honorific, not a name), and Bulgakov, himself, didn’t know anything more than what the character says about it (quoted above).

In any case, the important thing is not the meaning of the words, “the Master,” but the meaning of namelessness, per se. Real people almost always have names. The only place where namelessness is common is in multiple personality, where it often happens that personalities are nameless.

In short, the title of this novel, and the namelessness of its hero, probably reflect the author’s multiple personality. And that is where any analysis of this novel should start. Of course, there are other issues (magic, humor, etc.). My analysis is the first word, not the last.

Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita” (post 6): Psychologically speaking, the person who wrote Epilogue is not the same person who wrote Chapter XIII.

The narrator of the Epilogue at the end of the novel says that “a mental patient calling himself the Master,” who had mysteriously been abducted from the hospital, “remained a mystery for the investigators. They could not find an explanation for [his abduction], nor could they learn the name of the abducted patient” (p. 330).

Compare the above to what had been said about the Master in Chapter XIII, titled “Enter the Hero,” where this character had first been introduced:

     “I am the Master.”

     “What is your name?” [asks Ivan].

     “I no longer have a name. I gave it up, just as I’ve given up everything else in life. Let’s drop the subject.”

     “Well, then at least tell me about your novel,” requested Ivan tactfully.

     “By all means. My life has turned out to be anything but ordinary, if I do say so myself,” [the Master began].

     …A historian by training, he had worked until two years ago at one of the Moscow museums and had also done translations…one day he won 100,000 rubles.

    “You can imagine my surprise,” [said the Master about winning the lottery].

     …He quit his job at the museum and began to write a novel about Pontius Pilate.

     “Ah, that was a golden age!” the narrator whispered, his eyes shining” (pp. 114-115).

Obviously, both the character Ivan and the narrator of Chapter XIII knew very well that the Master’s identity could have been determined from his college records, his employment at the museum, and his being a lottery winner.

Psychologically speaking, then, it had to have been someone else who wrote the Epilogue, since the narrator who wrote the Epilogue didn’t know that the Master’s identity could easily have been traced by authorities through his training as a historian at college, his job at a museum, his job as a translator, and his winning the lottery. Evidently, the one who wrote the Epilogue had neither written nor even read Chapter XIII.

To repeat, these two narrators are so psychologically distinct from each other that they write different things and have separate memory banks, which clearly makes them alternate personalities.

In addition, in Chapter XIII, that “the narrator whispered, his eyes shining” makes that narrator a character, too, and makes that character an alternate personality to whatever other character heard him whisper: As discussed in many previous posts—search “voices”—in multiple personality, the personality who is “out” may hear personalities who are not “out” as voices in their head, speaking (or whispering) from behind the scenes.

Mikhail Bulgakov. The Master and Margarita. Trans. Burgin and O’Connor. New York, Vintage International/Random House, 1996