“Catch-22” and “Something Happened” by Joseph Heller (post 5): In his second novel, Joseph Heller showed even more interest in multiple personality. 

According to his biographer, Joseph Heller was “fascinated” with schizophrenia in Catch-22 (1961), and was even more fascinated with it by the time he wrote his second novel, Something Happened (1974). But Heller’s description of the protagonist of Something Happened would seem to indicate that he was not talking about schizophrenia, but about multiple personality:

In the years following publication of Catch-22, “Joe [Heller] would grow fascinated with…schizophrenia…In developing themes for his second novel [Something Happened], Joe would work consciously with the concept of schizophrenia, but this first book [Catch-22] had plenty of examples of it” (1, p. 228).

In Something Happened, “Slocum shows ‘signs that, I believe, are clinical symptoms of psychosis or schizophrenia,’ Joe [Heller] said of his main character. ‘[H]e’s saying, There’s somebody inside me who wants to do these things I’m ashamed of…Then he has to create a third [personality], to supervise the other two. Then a fourth one that’s watching everything…’ ” (1, p. 331).

What apparently had led Heller to confuse multiple personality with schizophrenia was an old, now totally discredited theory of schizophrenia, which said that it was caused by a “schizophrenogenic” mother’s mixed messages, which created a “double bind” (which Heller renamed, “Catch-22”).

“The Double Bind Theory was first articulated in relationship to schizophrenia, but [Gregory] Bateson and his colleagues hypothesized that schizophrenic thinking was not necessarily an inborn mental disorder but a learned confusion in thinking. It is helpful to remember the context in which these ideas were developed. Bateson and his colleagues were working in the Veteran's Administration Hospital (1949–1962) with World War II veterans. As soldiers they'd been able to function well in combat, but the effects of life-threatening stress had affected them. At that time, 18 years before Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder was officially recognized, the veterans had been saddled with the catch-all diagnosis of schizophrenia” (2).

“Double Bind” and “Catch-22” are about contradictions, a cardinal feature of multiple personality, in which one person may have two or more personalities who contradict each other in values, behavior, emotions, etc.

1. Tracy Daugherty. Just One Catch: A Biography of Joseph Heller. New York, St. Martin’s Press, 2011.

2. Wikipedia. “Double Bind.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_bind