Psychologists and Psychiatrists know that there is a normal version of multiple personality (dissociative identity), but they choose to ignore it.

The diagnostic criteria for dissociative identity disorder (multiple personality) in the official psychiatric diagnostic manual, DSM-5 (1), includes these two requirements:

“The symptoms cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of function” (p. 292).

“In children, the symptoms are not better explained by imaginary playmates or other fantasy play” (p. 292).

Why are these two cautionary statements necessary? Obviously, because there are adults who have the signs and symptoms of multiple personality, but who are not distressed or impaired by it, and so are not mentally ill; and because the imaginary playmate in childhood is, essentially, the same phenomenon as multiple personality, but most of these children are normal and healthy.

Clinical psychologists and psychiatrists know that there is a normal version of multiple personality in both adults and children, but they don’t care, because, as clinicians, they are interested only in mental illness.

But why do nonclinical, academic psychologists ignore the normal version of multiple personality? There are two reasons. First, they may have no clinical experience with multiple personality, and so may not even believe it exists. Second, they don’t know where they would find normal people with multiple personality to study. This blog is a hint.

1. American Psychiatric Association: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition. Arlington, VA, American Psychiatric Association, 2013.

David Brooks in New York Times says Trump (post 7) “haunted by multiple personality disorders.”  Multiple Personality disorders, or multiple  Personality Disorders?

Brooks says that Donald Trump “is a morally untethered, spiritually vacuous man who appears haunted by multiple personality disorders” (Op-Ed, July, 29, 2016).

Brooks does not read this blog. He is not a psychiatrist. And he may not distinguish between multiple personality (a dissociative disorder) and the completely separate diagnostic category of personality disorders (paranoid, schizoid, schizotypal, antisocial, borderline, histrionic, narcissistic, avoidant, dependent, obsessive-compulsive).

Ordinarily, since most people do not think of multiple personality, I would assume that Brooks means Trump has more than one Personality Disorder.

However, Brooks’ use of the word “haunted” raises the possibility that he does mean multiple personality, since, in the popular mind, multiple personality is often thought of as being possessed.

E. L. Doctorow says “Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia” (meaning multiple personality), and he has had “two minds” since age nine.

In his Paris Review interview (1), Doctorow says “Each book tends to have its own identity rather than the author’s. It speaks from itself rather than you. Each book is unlike the others because you are not bringing the same voice to every book.”

The interviewer asks, “Does that change you at all? The voice, for example, in Loon Lake is very different from the voice in Ragtime. Do you change…yourself?…sitting around the house you don’t behave like Joe of Paterson, for example, the hobo in Loon Lake.”

Doctorow replies, “Well, how do you know? Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia” [multiple personality].

Doctorow is saying that he experiences multiple personality when he writes. But does he mean it is merely a literary technique that he uses, or does he mean that he has a normal version of multiple personality, and has had it since childhood?

Doctorow explains, “I really started to think of myself as a writer when I was about nine. Whenever I read anything I seemed to identify as much with the act of composition as with the story. I seemed to have two minds: I would love the story and want to know what happened next, but at the same time I would somehow be aware of what was being done on the page. I identified myself as a kind of younger brother of the writer. I was on hand to help him figure things out.”

Thus, as early as age nine, Doctorow experienced himself as having at least “two minds.” While his regular personality attended to what was happening in the story he was reading, his other personality, his writer personality, who felt like “a kind of younger brother” of the story’s author, and who attended to “the act of composition,” was "on hand to help [the author] figure things out.”

1. George Plimpton (interviewer). “E. L. Doctorow, The Art of Fiction No. 94.” The Paris Review, Winter 1986, No. 101.

“Donald Trump Assures Voters That They’ll Never Know What He’ll Do As President”: Why would anyone brag about unpredictability or have puzzling inconsistency?

[Search "Trump" in this blog to read the five previous posts.]

According to an article in New York Magazine, Mr. Trump is proud of being unpredictable (1).

Unpredictability to gain a competitive advantage is a well-known tactic. But what if a person were unpredictable in ways that were not a competitive advantage?

A person could be unpredictable due to stupidity, or because of hidden motives and interests. But what if the person is not stupid, and his changes in opinion cannot always be explained by plausible motives and interests?

For all I know, Trump’s alleged unpredictability may always be completely explainable by his wish to gain a competitive advantage. But it is unusual for a person who is seeking political office to brag about his unpredictability. It makes me wonder if it is a cover story to explain away behavior that he, himself, sees as puzzlingly inconsistent. (Search “puzzling inconsistency” in this blog.)

1. Eric Levitz, New York Magazine, January 5, 2016. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/01/trump-voters-want-unpredictability.html

Iain Reid’s “I’m Thinking of Ending Things”: Female nameless narrator gets telephone messages from a male caller, but the calls originate from her own number.

If the author understood what he was writing about, and if he meant the ending to be a surprise, why does he reveal (page 23) and repeat (page 24) near the beginning of the novel that the telephone calls come from the protagonist’s own phone number? Since she lives alone, it could mean only one thing.

Readers of this blog would have an even earlier clue as to what was going on. Beginning on page one, the first-person narrator and protagonist is nameless. And there is only one psychological condition in which nameless personalities are common.

Also on page one is this very interesting question: “What if this thought wasn’t conceived by me but planted in my mind, predeveloped?” (The thought being referred to is the title and first line, “I’m thinking of ending things.”) In the history of psychiatry, the subjective experience that a thought was planted in your mind was once seen as a typical, psychotic symptom of schizophrenia. But it is now understood to be more common in multiple personality, when one personality puts a thought in the mind of another personality.

“What if this thought wasn’t conceived by me but planted in my mind, predeveloped?” may also be the author’s reflection on his writing process. I have quoted a number of writers in this blog—e.g., Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Sue Grafton—who say that they discover rather than create their stories, as if they were, somehow, predeveloped.

Iain Reid. I’m Thinking of Ending Things. New York, Scout Press/Simon & Schuster, 2016.

Multiple Personality Euphemisms: alter ego, anima, inner child, literary double, double consciousness, doppelgänger, imaginary companion, multiplicity, muse, personae, voices (character, narrative, nonpsychotic), second self, shadow, subpersonalities, the unconscious.

When people who have little or no clinical experience with multiple personality come upon its much more common, normal version, they don’t recognize it as such, so they use all kinds of other terms. The above terms are not always used this way, but they often are.

The essence of an alternate personality, by whatever name, is that it has thoughts, feelings, memory, and sense of personhood which are subjectively experienced as being more or less independent of the thoughts, feelings, memory, and sense of personhood of the person’s regular self.

Although alternate personalities may be quite talkative and obvious once their cover is blown, so to speak, they may, ordinarily, remain behind the scenes, coming out, if they do, only in private. And when they do come out in public, they usually do so incognito (sometimes causing the person to seem puzzlingly inconsistent).

Barbara Kingsolver (post 2), when writing, goes to “novel-neverland”: an allusion to J. M. Barrie’s Neverland and child-aged alternate personalities?

In yesterday’s post, I quoted Kingsolver as saying that when she has a good day of writing, she goes to “novel-neverland” where “time disappears.”

It could be that her allusion to J. M. Barrie’s Neverland was only to its timelessness, but it is hard to believe that any allusion to Neverland does not also allude to Peter Pan and children who never grow up, especially since Kingsolver wants children as main characters.

As I discuss in my four posts on J.M. Barrie (search “Barrie”), Peter Pan is a multiple personality story, since the only kind of children who live but never grow up are child-aged alternate personalities.

Barbara Kingsolver raises the question of why a novelist would have a child as a main character. An author of children’s literature may have the answer.

In her review of a novel for adults in tomorrow's New York Times Book Review, Barbara Kingsolver praises the fact that two of its three main characters are children. She says this is uncommon, because novels used to be written by “men and childless women. Writers lacking an everyday acquaintance with children are less likely to conceive them as literary personalities…But in the era of attachment parenting…why should modern writers fail to include child characters in fiction for adults?”

Is “an everyday acquaintance with children” the key determinant of whether a writer features children? What is the process of writing fiction? All I know about Kingsolver’s writing process is that, as she says on her website, she goes into an altered state of consciousness, with “words flooding into my brain” (she doesn’t say from where):

“I tend to wake up extremely early with words flooding into my brain.  If I don’t get up, they’ll continue to accumulate in puddles, so it’s a relief to get to the keyboard and dump them out.  I’ll take a break to have breakfast with my daughter and walk her to the school bus.  In the afternoon I’ll break again to meet with my assistant, Judy, to review the day’s mail pile and decide how to respond to requests.  But if I’ve really gone into novel-never-land, the time disappears.  I sometimes look at the clock and am stunned to see that six or eight hours have passed while I sat motionless in my chair.”

So I will have to look elsewhere for a clue as to what makes a writer focus on children. My theory is that the key determinant would be the writer’s relationship with his or her own child-aged alternate personalities, as illustrated in a past post about an award-winning author of children’s literature, reprinted here:

Monday, January 11, 2016

Katherine Paterson: Award-winning author of children’s literature writes to comfort and change her “frightened, lonely, nine-year-old” alternate personality.

“With every book I have written there is a reader whose life I have been determined to change…there is an audience from the very beginning…that reader is myself…

“But why children? If I am, in fact, writing to change myself, a forty-six-year-old woman, why don’t I have the decency to publish for other forty-six-year-old women and leave the innocent children out of it?

“…Let me explain. When I walk into a room full of well-dressed people, I never walk in alone. With me is a nine-year-old who knows her clothes are out of a missionary barrel, her accent is foreign, and her mannerisms peculiar—a child who knows that if she is lucky she will be ignored and if unlucky she will be sneered at…I can [never] excise that frightened, lonely nine-year-old or [do I] even want to…

“The reader I want to change is that burdened child within myself. As I begin a book, I am in a way inviting her along to see if there might be some path through this wilderness that we might hack out together…some sheltered spot where we might lay our burden down…” (1, pp. 55-60).

Paterson knows, objectively, that the child is a product of her own mind, but, subjectively, she experiences the child as different from her regular, adult self and not just a metaphor.

She and the child are not how she feels in different circumstances or moods. Rather, she and the child are often present and conscious at the same time; for example, while she’s writing and the child is her audience, or when she and the child walk, together, into a crowded room. This is an example of “double consciousness,” an old term for multiple personality, discussed in past posts.

The nine-year-old child is an “alternate personality,” but the word “alternate” is somewhat misleading, because, in multiple personality, more than one personality is usually conscious and present at any given time. The personalities “alternate” in the sense that only one is “out” and predominantly in control of behavior at any given time. But another personality is usually present and monitoring the situation from behind the scenes.

Some personalities are not co-conscious (are not aware of each other), but other personalities are co-conscious, as are Paterson and her child-aged personality.

Since multiple personality begins in childhood, child-aged personalities are common.

1. Katherine Paterson. A Sense of Wonder: On Reading and Writing Books for Children. New York, Plume/Penguin, 1981-1995.

Dickens’ (#8) “Tale of Two Cities” (#6): Since Dr. Manette has blatant multiple personality, why do literary criticism and Wikipedia not know it?

As discussed in recent posts, Dr. Manette, a pivotal character, has a clear, extensively described, case of multiple personality, according to me, a psychiatrist, and Sir Russell Brain, an eminent British neurologist.

Why, then, do Wikipedia and most literary criticism not recognize that Dr. Manette has multiple personality? Why is A Tale of Two Cities not known, read, and taught as a multiple personality novel?

My answer is the contents of this blog for the last three years. If you wish to add your own comments, please submit them.

Dickens’ (#7) “Tale of Two Cities” (#5): Why does Dickens portray both Dr. Manette (definitively) and Sydney Carton (probably) as having multiple personality?

Characters in this novel are consistent—Lorry is businesslike, Lucie is compassionate, Madame Defarge is relentless, etc.—except for Dr. Manette and Sydney Carton, who have the behavior typical of persons with undiagnosed multiple personality: puzzling inconsistency, caused by switching among more or less unrecognized, alternate personalities. (Search “puzzling inconsistency” in this blog for previous discussions.)

Sydney Carton

What is Carton’s personality? Aimless drunkard? Courtroom “memory” and “jackal” (as his law partner calls him)? Romantic hero? How different from most of the other characters is this puzzling inconsistency!

Carton’s main symptom suggestive of multiple personality is that he hears “old voices” and has “heard them always”:

“Since I knew you [Lucie], I…have heard whispers from old voices impelling me upward, that I thought were silent forever” (1, p. 156).

“These solemn words, which had been read at this father’s grave, arose in his mind as he went down the dark streets…’I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet he shall live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die’…Now that the streets were quiet, and the night wore on…he sometimes repeated them to himself as he walked; but he heard them always” (1, pp. 323-324).

I suppose that most readers interpret such references to hearing voices as metaphors, but since Dickens, himself, literally heard voices (see old posts), it must be assumed that when his characters say they hear voices, they literally hear voices.

And when sane people hear rational voices over the years—not just in culturally accepted, religious ceremonies—they are probably hearing the voices of alternate personalities, speaking from behind the scenes.

It may also be significant that Carton is given a backstory suggestive of a traumatic childhood (typical of multiple personality). When, as a youth, he originally heard the above words at his father’s grave, “His mother had died, years before” (1, p. 323).

In short, Sydney Carton probably had a traumatic childhood, is sane but hears voices, and has puzzling inconsistency. This does not prove he has multiple personality, but makes it possible, even probable.

Dr. Manette

In previous posts about Dr. Manette’s definitive multiple personality, I criticized the novel’s apparent implication that he got it from his eighteen years imprisonment as an adult. Multiple personality has a childhood onset, as a way to cope with childhood trauma.

However, later in the novel, there is this description of his shoemaking, alternate personality:

“Receiving no answer, he tore his hair, and beat his feet upon the ground, like a distracted child” (1, p. 352).

I had presumed that the cobbler personality was an adult, but this certainly looks like the behavior of a child. And since I know that the single most common type of alternate personality is a child-aged personality (due the fact that multiple personality has a childhood onset), it makes sense.

It makes me think of what Dickens recalled as the major trauma of his childhood, the months he was sent to work in a blacking factory. Now suppose that Dr. Manette had had a similar childhood trauma, but instead of being sent to a blacking factory, he was sent to apprentice with a cobbler. He may have developed a child-aged, shoemaking alternate personality to deal with that experience. And this alternate personality, dormant until his imprisonment, came out to deal with it.

Another concern I expressed about this character’s having multiple personality is that there is no good reason for its presence in this novel. Dr. Manette could have been portrayed as having severe, recurrent depression since his imprisonment. What added value is there in making it multiple personality? Many readers do not even notice that it is multiple personality, per se.

So I still maintain that the multiple personality of Dr. Manette is gratuitous, and that the only reason it is present is that it reflected the author’s own psychology.

1. Charles Dickens. A Tale of Two Cities. New York, Signet Classics, 2007.

Dickens’ (post 6) “Tale of Two Cities” (post 4): Eminent neurologist in British Medical Journal says Dr. Manette is accurate portrayal of multiple personality disorder.

From what I see in Wikipedia and online, many people may be reading and teaching A Tale of Two Cities without realizing that Dr. Manette has multiple personality (the mental illness, inadequately treated, not the normal version). So when I say that Dr. Manette has multiple personality, you might want a second opinion, which follows:

Dickensian Diagnoses

by Sir RUSSELL BRAIN, Bt., D.M., LL.D.

D.C.L., P.R.C.P.

Physician to the London Hospital and the Maida Vale

Hospital for Nervous Diseases

Br Med J. 1955 Dec 24; 2(4955): 1553–1556.

[The following is a direct quote from pages 1555-1556.]

Multiple Personality

Perhaps the most remarkable example of Dickens's psychiatric

insight is the case of Dr. Manette in A Tale of Two

Cities. It is remarkable for the accuracy of his account

of a case of multiple personality and loss of memory,

because it is the most comprehensive of his studies of

psychological abnormality, and because it includes an anticipation

of psychotherapy. Dr. Manette had been imprisoned

for many years without trial in the Bastille during the French

Revolution. As a prisoner he had been a shoemaker, and

after his release he lived in a garret in Paris and spent his

time working at a low bench making shoes. Subsequently

he went to London, but had lost his memory for a long

period of his life. He said: "My mind is a blank, from

some time-I cannot even say what time-when I employed

myself, in my captivity, in making shoes, to the time when

I found myself living in London with my dear daughter

here. She had become familiar to me, when a gracious God

restored my faculties; but, I am quite unable even to say

how she had become familiar. I have no remembrance of

the process." Dr. Manette had long given up his shoemaking

and was practising in London when his daughter's

marriage brought about a relapse. No sooner had she gone

away with her husband than the doctor was found back at

his shoemaking and unable to recognize his friends. He

remained in this state for ten days, and then he was found

one morning with the shoemaker's bench and tools put aside

in his usual morning dress. "He at first supposed that his

daughter's marriage had taken place yesterday. An incidental

allusion purposely thrown out, to the day of the

week, and the day of the month, set him thinking and counting,

and evidently made him uneasy.”

His friend Mr. Lorry now embarked upon the psychotherapy.

He thought it best to present Dr. Manette's case

to himself as though it was that of a patient. He described

to Dr. Manette someone who had had a great mental shock

and who had suffered from a relapse. He led him gradually

to the recognition that the case was his own and then asked

him " 'to what would you refer this attack?' 'You have

no idea,' said Dr. Manette, 'how such an apprehension

weighs on the sufferer's mind, and how difficult-how almost

impossible-it is, for him to force himself to utter a word

upon the topic that depresses him.' ' Would he,' asked

Mr. Lorry, ' be sensibly relieved if he could prevail upon

himself to impart that secret brooding to anyone, when it

is on him?' 'I think so. But it is, as I have told you,

next to impossible. I even believe it-in some cases-to be

quite impossible.'" But by degrees the resistance is overcome,

Dr. Manette's analysis proceeds, and he is led to

regard his shoemaker's bench as a symbol both of the past

and of his neurosis, and to agree to its destruction. "Very

strange," says Dickens, "to see what a struggle there was

within him." But although Dr. Manette was relieved he

was not cured, and he relapsed again when he failed to

rescue Darnay from the guillotine at the trial in Paris. He

disappeared, wandered about, and when he came back

demanded his shoemaker's bench. He was back in the past.

"Time presses: I must finish those shoes." This time the

relapse was permanent, and the last we see of Dr. Manette

is as a "helpless, inarticulately murmuring, wandering old

man."

Dickens’ (post 5) “Tale of Two Cities” (post 3): Dr. Manette has a relapse of his multiple personality, but there is still no reason for him to have multiple personality.

Years after Dr. Manette’s release from prison, during which time he has functioned normally as a physician, his daughter, with his approval, has just married Darnay.

However, something said to him by Darnay seems to be the precipitant of a switch back to his prison shoemaker, alternate personality.

“The door of [Dr. Manette’s] room opened, and he came out with Charles Darnay. He was so deadly pale—which had not been the case when they went in together—that no vestige of color was to be seen in his face…

“…it was the old scared look…his absent manner…

“…‘O me! All is lost!’ cried [Miss Pross], wringing her hands…‘He doesn’t know me, and is making shoes!’…(1, pp. 199-200)

After nine days, Dr. Manette switches back to his regular personality, with no memory—a typical multiple personality memory gap—for those nine days.

There is still no explanation in the novel for why Dr. Manette has been given multiple personality, per se, rather than, for example, recurrent depression, posttraumatic flashbacks, or feelings of revenge. Multiple personality, which has a childhood onset, is not something that an adult would get from imprisonment.

1. Charles Dickens. A Tale of Two Cities. New York, Signet Classics, 2007.

Dickens’ (post 4) “Tale of Two Cities” (post 2): Dr. Manette's multiple personality (two personalities, memory gaps); Darnay, Carton look-alike doubles.

When first seen after being released from eighteen years in prison, Dr. Manette had been in his alternate personality, identifying himself not as Dr. Manette, but as “One Hundred and Five, North Tower” (1, p. 46). However, when next seen five years later, testifying at Darnay’s treason trial, he has switched back to his regular personality, Dr. Manette, who has memory gaps:

“My mind is blank from some time—I cannot even say what time—when I employed myself, in my captivity, in making shoes, to the time when I found myself living in London with my dear daughter here. She had become familiar to me, when a gracious God restored my faculties; but, I am quite unable even to say how she had become familiar. I have no remembrance of the process” (1, p. 78).

Two (or more) personalities plus memory gaps are the psychiatric diagnostic criteria for multiple personality.

As I read further, I will be interested to see what reason, if any, is given for portraying Dr. Manette as having multiple personality, since the horror of his imprisonment could have been dramatized without giving him multiple personality, per se.

That Darnay and Carton look alike—a literary metaphor for multiple personality, since alternate personalities do look alike—will, obviously, be integral to the plot. But did it have to be? Surely that is not the only means by which a character can make a noble sacrifice.

In this blog, I have found unnecessary multiple personality in so many novels (not only in the nineteenth century) that I have had to give it a name, “gratuitous multiple personality,” which, since it isn’t necessary to the story, probably reflects the author’s own psychology.

1. Charles Dickens. A Tale of Two Cities. New York, Signet Classics, 2007.

Multiple Personality?: “The Citrusy Mystery of Trump’s Hair” by Frank Bruni in New York Times says Trump’s hair color changes indicate “who he wants to be”

In addition to Donald Trump’s alleged past use of pseudonymous identities, he has undeniable, frequent changes in hair color:

“The evolution of Trump’s coiffure over the decades has been widely noted and thoroughly documented. He has parted his hair on one side and then the other. He has combed it forward, swept it backward…But less frequently observed is how much its hue changes, and I don’t mean from one year to another. I mean from one day to the next…Trump’s hair…signifies how he feels — and who he wants to be — at any given instant.”

Mr. Bruni conceives of Trump’s hair as “his mood ring.” It could also indicate switches from one personality to another. Without knowing Trump’s subjective experience, either interpretation is unproven speculation.

This is not to say that a person with multiple personality could not be a good president.

“A Tale of Two Cities” by Charles Dickens: Famous opening—“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”—a prelude to Theme of the Double.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way…”

When I first read this novel many years ago, I read this opening as an eloquent, clever statement of a timeless truth. And it is.

Nevertheless, it is not how most people think. Most people, if asked what kind of times we are living in, would say that it was predominantly good or predominantly bad, or a mixture of good and bad; whereas Dickens says it is both very good and very bad, a contradiction (typical of multiple personality, since each personality has its own opinion).

Dickens’s opening lines are as if two persons—one an optimist, the other a pessimist—were issuing a joint statement: two persons or one person with multiple personality.

Indeed, even before the opening lines, there is the duality of the title, which seems natural enough, considering the story, but it was not the only title that Dickens could have used.

It may not be fair to read deep meaning into every word in a novel, but the title (if chosen by the author) and opening lines are among the least inadvertent.

Failure to distinguish between Pseudo-Forgetfulness (lying), Absent-mindedness (inattention, preoccupation), and Memory Gaps (dissociative amnesia)

You had told someone something. You assume they had heard you and understood what you said. But now they don’t remember it. What is the reason for their forgetfulness?

A musician takes a taxi and puts his cello in the trunk, but when he arrives at his destination, he forgets his cello until after the taxi is gone.

You saw an acquaintance eating ice cream, but you were too busy to stop and say hello. So when you subsequently meet them, you ask how they enjoyed the ice cream, but they say you must be mistaken, because they’ve been on a diet for months.

You ask your spouse about last night, since what happened didn’t usually happen, but your spouse doesn't seem to remember anything noteworthy, until you give a clue as to what you are talking about.

How can such forgetting be explained?

They could be lying. Maybe the musician wanted to collect insurance. Maybe the person who was seen eating ice cream had bragged about how responsible he was in adhering to his new diet, and now is lying out of embarrassment.

Maybe they were absent-minded. The person who ate the ice cream may have been so preoccupied with, and distracted by, some emergency or crisis, that he had instinctively reverted to an old eating habit without thinking about it.

But there is a third possibility: memory gaps. The person may not have been lying (remembering, but pretending to have forgotten) or absent-minded (forgetful or heedless due to inattentiveness or preoccupation). The person may have been quite attentive, but memory may have been divided among more than one personality, so that one personality may not have remembered what happened on another personality’s watch.

The reason that lying and absent-mindedness are common knowledge is that people often admit that they were embarrassed or inattentive. In contrast, unless people have an excuse like alcohol or drugs, they rarely volunteer the information that they have memory gaps, because it sounds too weird and crazy. However, sometimes, if you ask them directly and matter-of-factly, they will acknowledge it.

They may lie in denying memory gaps (out of embarrassment) or they may truthfully not remember their memory gaps (“amnesia for their amnesia”). But at a later date, they may acknowledge it, explaining, “I knew but I didn’t know,” which is possible in multiple personality.

Search “memory gaps” and “mental status” in this blog for previous discussions of this cardinal symptom of multiple personality.

Novelists have a normal version of multiple personality: Are there a limited number of successful ways for their alternate personalities to be organized?

You might think that there were an infinite number of possible plots for novels, or that there would be an infinite number of ways for novelists’ alternate personalities to successfully collaborate.

But if there are a limited number of basic plots (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Basic_Plots) or dramatic situations (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thirty-Six_Dramatic_Situations), why wouldn’t there also be a limited number of ways for a novelist’s alternate personalities to successfully work together?

To answer this question, you would have to find out how the alternate personalities were organized in a large number of novelists, and then see if there were a limited number of basic organizations. I don’t know when this will be known and done—or who will do it—but I think it would be possible. 

The results would be of interest to aspiring novelists and writing programs, who might like to have some frame of reference for this aspect of the writing process.

Is there a non-traumatic, story-telling pathway to multiple personality? Or have all novelists (with their normal version of multiple personality) had childhood trauma?

Conventional wisdom is that multiple personality is a way to cope with childhood trauma, if the child happens to have been born with a sufficient ability to use the psychological defense of dissociation (an ability which is relatively common in children, as indicated by such normal phenomena as imaginary companions).

Whether a person’s multiple personality is a mental illness (i.e., it causes distress and dysfunction) or the normal version (an asset, which most novelists have) would depend on the how early and severe the trauma, whether there were supportive adults to help deal with the trauma, and whether there were other helpful things (like writing).

Since there has been trauma throughout history, it makes sense that there has always been a way to cope with it.

However, another thing that people have needed throughout history is story-telling. Before the written word, when stories were spoken, the best story-tellers would have been those who could virtually become each character as each one spoke. And the same is true for the process of writing characters.

So if things exist because they are useful, I can conceive of a nontraumatic, story-telling pathway to multiple personality. Plausibility does not make it true, but my mind is open.

The Mystery of the Literary Double: Why do novelists write about doubles and doubleness instead of multiples and multiplicity, and which one writes about it?

Theoretically, the simplest case of multiple personality is two personalities, but I have never seen a case in which the person had only two personalities.

The first time you meet a person’s alternate personality, you might think that there are only two—the regular self and the alternate personality—but it always turns out that there are more. And most of the personalities are not duplicates in how they look to themselves or each other. The theme of the double makes no sense.

So why does Dostoevsky have The Double, and Stevenson Jekyll and Hyde? Why does Henry James in “The Private Life” have one of a writer’s selves out socializing, while the writer’s other self is back in his room writing? Why does Joyce Carol Oates write about “JCO and I” (after “Borges and I”)? Why does Margaret Atwood write about the writer’s inherent “doubleness” (the one who does the living and the one who does the writing)?

And if there were only two, which of the two would be the one who is telling the reader about this?

W. B. Yeats, 1923 Nobel Prize winner, hoped his “double” and “anti-self” “Leo” was a genuine spirit, but admitted “Leo” might be “a secondary personality”

“It was at Wimbledon, in 1912, that Yeats felt himself contacted by the spirit claiming to be ‘Leo’…’Leo’…said he had been with Yeats since childhood as his ‘opposite’…’Leo’ thereafter frequently reappeared to Yeats, who was so stirred that he began composing a correspondence with this alternate self…This imaginary dialogue was not wasted. It inspired the great antiphonal poem ‘Ego Dominus Tuus’ written in 1915,” which included the following lines:

“I call to the mysterious one who yet

Shall walk the wet sands by the edge of the stream

And look most like me, being indeed my double,

And prove of all imaginable things

The most unlike, being my anti-self…”

“Yeats freely confessed that his useful sparring partner ‘Leo’ might come from his own imagination. As he explained in 1917 to Sir William Barrett, past President of the Society for Psychical Research, ‘I think one should deal with a control on the working hypothesis that it is genuine. This does not mean that I feel any certainty on the point, but even if it is a secondary personality that should be the right treatment’ " (1, pp. 9-10).

1. Brenda Maddox. George’s Ghosts: A New Life of W. B. Yeats. London, Picador, 1999.

Shapeshifting, Metamorphosis, Transformation, Jekyll/Hyde: How Multiple Personality is Represented in Mythology, Folklore, and Speculative Fiction.

“The idea of shapeshifting is present in the oldest forms of totemism and shamanism, as well as the oldest extant literature and epic poems, including works such as the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Iliad, where the shapeshifting is usually induced by the act of a deity…It remains a common trope in modern fantasy, children's literature, and works of popular culture…

“Popular shapeshifting creatures in folklore are werewolves and vampires …the Huli jing of East Asia (including the Japanese kitsune), and the gods, goddesses, and demons of numerous mythologies, such as the Norse Loki or the Greek Proteus…Examples of shapeshifting in classical literature include many examples in Ovid's Metamorphoses…” (Wikipedia).

Wikipedia’s article on Shapeshifting goes on for sixteen pages:

Table of Contents

Folklore and mythology

1.1 Greco-Roman

1.2 British and Irish

1.2.1 Celtic mythology

1.3 Norse

1.4 Other lore

1.4.1 Armenian

1.4.2 Indian

1.4.3 Philippines

1.4.4 Tatar

1.4.5 Chinese

1.4.6 Japanese

1.4.7 Korean

1.5 Folktales

Themes

2.1 Punitive changes

2.2 Transformation chase

2.3 Powers

2.4 Bildungsroman

2.5 Needed items

2.6 Inner conflict (e.g., Jekyll’s transformation to Hyde)

2.7 Usurpation

2.8 Ill-advised wishes

2.9 Monstrous bride/bridegroom

2.10 Death

Modern

3.1 Fiction

3.2 Popular culture

Psychologically speaking, much of the above shapeshifting, metamorphosis, and transformation in world literature, now and throughout history—not just Jekyll and Hyde—represents the personality switches of multiple personality.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shapeshifting

Psychologist Mary Watkins’ 1986 book says “imaginal dialogues” with “invisible guests” are normal and creative, but doesn’t know it is multiple personality.

Watkins took the title of her book, “Invisible Guests” (1) from the poem quoted in yesterday’s post, and has other interesting quotations like one from the autobiography of Anthony Trollope:

“…and [the author] can never know [his characters] well unless he can live with them in the full reality of established intimacy. They must be with him as he lies down to sleep, and as he wakes from his dreams. He must learn to hate them and to love them. He must argue with them, quarrel with them, forgive them, and even submit to them. He must know of them whether they be cold-blooded or passionate, whether true or false, and how far true, and how far false. The depth and the breadth, and the narrowness and the shallowness of each should be clear to him. And as, here in our outer world, we know that men and women change,—become worse or better as temptation or conscience may guide them,—so should these creations of his change, and every change should be noted by him…It is so that I have lived with my characters, and thence has come whatever success I have obtained…” (1, pp. 111-112).

Watkins then adds: “The development of depth of characterization corresponds to the development of the character’s autonomy. As the character becomes more autonomous, we know about its world not just from external observation or supposition but from the character directly. The author or narrator becomes less omniscient and can be surprised by the other. Observation of the character’s actions can be supplemented by the character’s own account of thoughts, feelings and wishes through which the imaginal other gains interiority and depth” (1, p. 112).

However, Watkins thinks that “this multiplicity of characters in an individual’s experience would not resemble a pathological state of ‘multiple personality.’ In the latter there is no imaginal dialogue, only sequential monologue…the illness of multiple personality is problematic precisely because of its singleness of voice at any one moment” (1, pp. 104-105).

However, the fact is: “Interpersonality communication is probably going on in every multiple [person with multiple personality] most of the time. The therapeutic concern is more with the…quality of communication. Most host personalities hear voices [of alternate personalities]…Other alters [alternate personalities] report being able to see and talk with one another while they are not ‘out’…” (2, p. 152).

Watkins makes some good points, but doesn’t realize she is talking about a normal version multiple personality.

1. Mary Watkins, Ph.D. Invisible Guests: The Development of Imaginal Dialogues. Hillsdale NJ, The Analytic Press/Lawrence Erlbaum, 1986.

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