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.”