Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man” (post 3): He is invisible, because his true emotions and humanity, in the form of alternate personalities, are hidden.

A man is “invisible” when he has repressed, and buried inside him, his true self, his humanity, so that it is invisible from the outside.

“Behold! a walking zombie! Already he’s learned to repress not only his emotions but his humanity. He’s invisible, a walking personification of the Negative…The mechanical man! (1, p. 72).

But what if that repressed, true self were released, discovered, and became visible, so to speak? What form would it have?

Would it seem like an alien, alternate personality that had been lodged deep inside him? Would he hear its voice? Might he hear more than one voice: the voices of several, contradictory, alternate personalities, each singing its own tune inside his head?

“…I had the feeling that I had been talking beyond myself, had used words and expressed attitudes not my own, that I was in the grip of some alien personality lodged deep within me…” (1, p. 189).

“…but now a new, painful, contradictory voice had grown up within me…If only all the contradictory voices shouting inside my head would calm down and sing a song in unison…” (1, p. 197).

Clinically, the counterpart to what Ellison calls “invisible” is what some clinicians refer to as “depleted.” For example, a patient who is noted to have an absence of strong emotions is later found to have alternate personalities—an angry personality, etc.— who have these strong emotions, leaving the host personality emotionally depleted.

1. Ralph Ellison. Invisible Man [1952]. New York, Random House, 1982.