“Stop-Time” by Frank Conroy (post 3): Amnesia—a multiple personality memory gap—for the building he lived in until he was eight years old.

This memoir is the story of a chaotic, puzzling childhood, which, Conroy says, is “a past I didn’t understand, a past I feared” (1, p. 278).

The key to this psychological mystery is his history of memory gaps, one instance of which I quoted in my previous post, from the beginning of the memoir. Another example is found toward the end of the memoir:

“…I would find myself staring up at that particular building. Because I’d been told, I knew I’d lived there for many years as a child. Passing it my mind became still. All the noises of the world stopped abruptly, like a movie running on without a sound track. I had lived in the building until I was eight years old and yet I lacked memories of it. No image of the apartment, no image of having lived there, no image of myself. It was spooky” (1, p. 212).

This is not ordinary forgetting. It is impossible for Conroy to have had no memories at all of where he lived until he was eight years old. The memories must have been somewhere. If they were not held by his regular personality, then they must have been held by one or more alternate personalities.

If I had interviewed him, I could have brought out and spoken with these alternate personalities. And what they told me could have been corroborated by family, friends, neighbors, and an inspection of the inside of the building itself.

1. Frank Conroy. Stop-Time [A Memoir, 1967]. New York, Penguin Books, 1977.