Anne Sexton (post 3): Her psychiatrist tells her “Elizabeth” alternate personality to get lost, and her host personality says “Elizabeth” was a lie.

“Early in Sexton’s therapy [1957], the Elizabeth persona began making appearances while Sexton was in a trance by scrawling messages in childlike handwriting…By September, she was typing letters which she left unsigned, though ‘Elizabeth’ appeared in the return address on the envelopes. Somewhat comically, the writer claimed that she had to type her introductory letter in the dark so Anne wouldn’t read it” (1, p. 55).

Note: Although the biographer thought that the above was comical, readers of this blog know better, since they recall the recent post on Shirley Jackson in which she describes her alternate personalities as leaving notes when her host personality was not looking.

Sexton’s psychiatrist, Dr. Orne, considered “Elizabeth” to be a dangerous symptom for a patient he had diagnosed as having hysteria. He feared that “Sexton was perilously close to developing multiple personality disorder” (1, p. 60), so he ignored “Elizabeth” and she no longer appeared. Moreover, Anne denounced “Elizabeth” as having been a lie (1, p. 63).

Dr. Orne had also expressed concern that Sexton was such a suggestible hysteric that if he had left her hospitalized on a ward with patients who had schizophrenia, she might falsely adopt their psychotic symptoms. But since Sexton had not been exposed to any patients with multiple personality (completely different from schizophrenia), from where did he think she was coming up with the idea of an alternate personality? And his belief that a person can develop multiple personality for the first time in adulthood is wrong; it has a childhood onset.

Moreover, Orne seems to equate having multiple personality with the overtness of an alternate personality. He does not know that that is not how multiple personality ordinarily looks (before it is diagnosed). In the typical case, the alternate personalities are incognito (answering to the regular name and pretending to be the host personality).

You typically discover the alternate personalities in the process of accounting for the person’s memory gaps. And Orne had never understood why Sexton had memory gaps for their therapy sessions (see previous post).

In multiple personality, undiagnosed alternate personalities typically become overt only in some sort of crisis. “Elizabeth” became overt, because she felt that Dr. Orne did not understand his patient (1, p. 55). But when Dr. Orne intentionally ignored her, she reverted to her usual life behind the scenes. Meanwhile, Anne, the host personality, was only too glad to call “Elizabeth” a lie, in compliance with Dr. Orne’s opinion about it.

As quoted in the previous post, from an interview years later, Sexton knew that she was “many people.”

1. Diane Wood Middlebrook. Anne Sexton: A Biography. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1991.