“Catch-22” by Joseph Heller (post 3): Colonel Cathcart and General Dreedle have memory gaps and self-contradictions typical of multiple personality.

Colonel Cathcart addresses the chaplain:

“Corporal Whitcomb tells me you took a plum tomato when you were in here this morning.”

     “This morning? But, sir! You gave it to me.”

     Colonel Cathcart cocked his head with suspicion. “I didn’t say I didn’t give it to you, did I? I merely said you took it…Did I give it to you?”

     “Yes, sir. I swear you did.”

     “Then I’ll just have to take your word for it. Although I can’t imagine why I’d want to give you a plum tomato” (1, p. 282).

General Dreedle addresses Colonel Cathcart:

     “Well, I’ll be damned,” General Dreedle had exclaimed hoarsely, his shaggy gray menacing eyebrows beetling in recognition. “Is that a chaplain I see over there? That’s really a fine thing when a man of God begins hanging around a place like this [the officers’ club] with a bunch of dirty drunks and gamblers.”

     Colonel Cathcart compressed his lips primly and started to rise. “I couldn’t agree with you more, sir,” he assented briskly in a tone of ostentatious disapproval. “I just don’t know what’s happening to the clergy these days.”

     “They’re getting better, that’s what’s happening to them,” General Dreedle growled emphatically.

     Colonel Cathcart gulped awkwardly and made a nimble recovery. “Yes, sir. They are getting better. That’s exactly what I had in mind, sir.”

     “This is just the place for a chaplain to be, mingling with the men while they’re out drinking and gambling so he can get to understand them and win their confidence. How the hell else is he ever going to get them to believe in God?” (1, p. 283).

     “That’s a fine thing,” General Dreedle growled at the bar, gripping his empty shot glass in his burly hand. “That’s really a fine thing. When a man of God begins hanging around a place like this with a bunch of dirty drunks and gamblers…

     “If he wasn’t a chaplain,” General Dreedle muttered, “I’d have him taken outside and shot” (1, p. 284).

Comment

There is no ordinary reason for Colonel Cathcart to have forgotten that he had given the tomato to the chaplain. Even after the chaplain reminds him of it, he not only does not remember it, but considers the act something that he would never have done. This is typical of one personality’s memory gap for, and lack of identification with, the behavior of another personality.

General Dreedle switches back and forth between two personalities, which hold opposite opinions. And he does not remember (memory gap) having just expressed the opposite opinion.

These are good examples of what I have termed “gratuitous multiple personality,” which means signs and symptoms of multiple personality that don’t appear to have been put in the text to raise the issue of multiple personality, per se. The author evidently considered memory gaps and self-contradiction to be aspects of ordinary psychology, possibly because it was a more or less ordinary aspect of his own psychology.

In real life, a person with multiple personality would not admit that he didn’t remember, and/or identify with, witnessed behavior (unless he could put the blame on drugs or alcohol). He would pretend that he did remember it and/or quickly change the subject. If the person he was talking to chose to confront him with his contradictory behavior, he would either act offended or claim he was joking, and then change the subject. In short, people with multiple personality become quite adept at talking their way out of such awkward situations.

1. Joseph Heller. Catch-22 [1961]. New York, Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2011.