“The Bird’s Nest” by Shirley Jackson (post 7): The War Among Personalities, The Pitiful Doctor, and The Number of Alternate Personalities. 

Personality War

This novel is very good at illustrating the rivalry, conflict, and war among alternate personalities in multiple personality disorder (as opposed to normal multiple personality, in which the personalities are reasonably cooperative).

Indeed, the author may have come to think of the novel’s plot as a mystery story—Which of the four personalities would win?—making the ending a surprise twist (in which a previously unknown, fifth personality, takes over).

Pitiful Doctor

Some readers find the doctor arrogant and paternalistic. I took pity on him, since treating those four personalities was like trying to conduct group therapy when members of the group don’t agree on the nature of reality (multiple personality may be thought of as multiple reality).

Number of Personalities

And since this was probably the doctor’s only case of multiple personality, he made a number of serious mistakes, one of which was to assume that Elizabeth had only four or five personalities.

He evidently didn’t know, for example, that the real-life woman known as “Eve” in “The Three Faces of Eve” (1) was eventually found, by the doctor who cured her, to have had about twenty-two personalities. And if Shirley Jackson’s doctor had read Mark 5:1-20 in the New Testament, he would have known that the man with multiple personality treated by Jesus was called “Legion” because he contained multitudes.

1. Wikipedia. “Chris Costner Sizemore.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Costner_Sizemore