“Blood Meridian” by Cormac McCarthy (post 3): Epilogue, Ending, Namelessness of Kid-Man were dictated by author’s committee of alternate personalities.

As noted in http://www.oprah.com/oprahsbookclub/cormac-mccarthy-on-the-power-of-the-subconscious-video, Cormac McCarthy implies—similar to the example he gives of novelist Henry Miller—that his own novels are “dictated” to him by a “committee" that resides in his “subconscious”; i.e., his alternate personalities.

So if you want to know: 1. why the kid/man is nameless, 2. what happens at the end of the novel between Judge Holden and the man (formerly the kid), and 3. what the Epilogue means, well, you just have to accept that this novel was dictated, behind-the-scenes, by a committee whose members don’t have to explain themselves, either to you or Cormac McCarthy.

Who says so? Cormac McCarthy’s host personality, who knows this explanation will be hard for you to accept, which is why he doesn’t like to give interviews.

Cormac McCarthy (post 3) tells Oprah Winfrey about his writing process: He has “sense of taking dictation” from “a committee and they may have meetings”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qidyx3oXqpY

“Blood Meridian” by Cormac McCarthy (post 2): Author gives Judge Holden so many abilities, attributes, and contradictions as to suggest multiple personality.

Judge Holden is depicted as a person with too many abilities for one person; as being both adult and childlike (due to child-aged alternate personalities?); as being ageless and frozen in time (as some alternate personalities are); as being able to write with both hands at the same time (guided by a different personality for each hand?); as sometimes appearing psychotic, but other times not:

“As depicted in Blood Meridian, Holden is a mysterious figure, a cold-blooded killer…Holden displays a preternatural breadth of knowledge and skills—paleontology, archaeology, linguistics, law, technical drawing, geology, chemistry, prestidigitation, and philosophy, to name a few.

“He is described as seven feet tall and completely bereft of body hair, including no eyebrows or eyelashes. He is massive in frame, enormously strong, an excellent musician and dancer, a fine draftsman, exceptionally articulate and persuasive in several languages, and an unerring marksman. His skin is so pale as to have almost no pigment. This strange appearance, as well as his keen, extremely fast reflexes, strength, agility, apparent immunity to sleep and aging, and multifarious other abilities point to his being something other than a normal human being” (1).

He is described as nearly seven feet, but having childlike face and lips, and small hands; able to write with both hands at the same time (2, p. 140); and “He appeared to be a lunatic and then not” (2, p. 133).

In short, the character’s amazing multitude of diverse attributes and behaviors raise the possibility that he has multiple personality.

1. Wikipedia. “Judge Holden.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judge_Holden

2. Cormac McCarthy. Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West [1985]. New York, Modern Library, 2001.

“Blood Meridian” by Cormac McCarthy: “Legion of horribles” is biblical reference to Legion’s legion of demons, alternate personalities exorcised by Jesus.

“The first of the herd began to swing past them…when…rose a fabled horde…bearing shields…with bits of broken mirrorglass that cast a thousand…suns against the eyes of their enemies. A legion of horribles…clad in costumes attic or biblical…like a horde from a hell…like those vaporous beings in regions beyond right knowing…” (1, pp. 54-55).

The above is a biblical allusion to the following:

“ ‘Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!’ And Jesus asked him, ‘What is your name?” He replied, ‘My name is Legion; for we are many.’ And he begged him eagerly not to send them out of the country…‘Send us to the swine, let us enter them.’…And the unclean spirits came out, and entered the swine; and the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the sea, and were drowned in the sea” (Mark 5:9-13).

As discussed in past posts (search “legion”), the modern, psychological interpretation of demon possession and the story of Legion is multiple personality. So when Cormac McCarthy puts “legion” and “biblical” in the same passage, he raises the issue of multiple personality. Whether he does so intentionally or inadvertently, I don’t know, but will keep reading.

1. Cormac McCarthy. Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West [1985]. New York, Modern Library, 2001.

“Fight Club” by Chuck Palahniuk (post 2): Public, Filmmaker, Publisher all try to ignore or minimize protagonist’s explicit, pivotal, multiple personality.

The Wikipedia entry for the novel makes relatively brief reference to alternate personalities, and does not mention multiple personality by name, except for a link at the bottom of the page to dissociative identity disorder (formal name for multiple personality). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fight_Club_(novel)

The Wikipedia entry for the film version makes only passing reference to “dissociated personalities” and does not discuss multiple personality by name. Moreover, the casting of two different actors for the protagonist’s alternate personalities (they share the same body) shows the filmmakers’ attempt to minimize the issue of multiple personality. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fight_Club

Even the novel’s publisher tries to ignore the protagonist’s multiple personality. The title of the novel, obviously, makes no reference to it. But there is also the copyright page’s list of subject headings under which the novel should be indexed. It makes no reference to multiple personality: 1. Millennialism—United States—Fiction. 2. Young men—United States—Fiction. 3. Apocalyptic fantasies. I. Title.

In short, even when multiple personality is an explicit, pivotal issue in a novel, many people try to minimize or ignore it, especially when the author does (see previous post).

Chuck Palahniuk. Fight Club [1996]. New York, W. W. Norton & Company, 2005.

“Fight Club” by Chuck Palahniuk: Protagonist has “split personality,” but author’s Afterword about writing novel does not mention multiple personality.

There are two major issues in this novel: the protagonist’s multiple personality and the fight clubs.

The author’s Afterword does discuss the fight clubs. Palahniuk says, “The whole idea of a fight club wasn’t important. It was arbitrary…The fighting wasn’t the important part of the story” (1, p. 213). Which would leave multiple personality as the basic reason that this novel was written.

The novel is explicit about the protagonist, who ultimately says: “I’m not Tyler Durden. He’s the other side of my split personality. I say, has anybody here seen the movie Sybil?” (1, p. 196). Why, then, is the issue of multiple personality not even mentioned in an author’s Afterword about why and how the novel was written? It is a remarkable omission.

In many past posts, I have used the terms “gratuitous multiple personality” and “unacknowledged multiple personality” to refer to multiple personality that was present in a novel for no apparent reason except that it probably reflected the author’s own psychology. However, since multiple personality is integral to Fight Club and is explicitly acknowledged in the text, those concepts would not apply here. Will I have to coin another term for Palahniuk’s omission in his Afterword? Maybe not.

It is as if the person who wrote the Afterword were not the same person who wrote the novel: the former a person who does not think multiple personality worth mentioning, the latter a person with a great interest in it. The omission in his Afterword implies the author’s multiple personality.

1. Chuck Palahniuk. Fight Club [1996]. New York, W. W. Norton & Company, 2005.

“Madness” in “Don Quixote” by Cervantes (post 6): Most literary criticism accepts the meaningless term “madness” and avoids Don Quixote’s diagnosis.

In my previous post, I pointed out that an eminent Cervantes scholar had said four contradictory things about Don Quixote’s “madness.” My main concern was that he did not discuss—did not seem to care—whether or not Don Quixote had a diagnosable condition (which I discussed in another post).

As you can see from Don Quixote and by searching “madness” in this blog, the literary use and acceptance of the word “madness” is an old, bad habit. The word does not mean anything specific. In the twenty-first century, its use is lazy.

I suggest that novelists, literary scholars, and writers in general put the following two books on a shelf in the room where they write:

1. American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (“DSM-5”). Arlington VA, American Psychiatric Association, 2013.

2. Frank W. Putnam, M.D. Diagnosis and Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder. New York, The Guilford Press, 1989.

Whenever you are tempted to use or accept the word “madness,” look at these two books on your shelf and don’t do it.

Judging Novels: Is it better to judge the literary merit of a novel according to the quality of what is written, or according to the process by which it was written?

This may seem like a silly question, because isn’t what is meant by literary merit the quality of what is written?

But judgment of quality is subjective. For example, Dickens is now often cited as a great writer. But at one time he was not taken seriously. And some former winners of prestigious literary prizes are now virtually forgotten. In short, you cannot make an objective determination of the quality of a novel by what people think of it.

What about the process by which a novel was written? If a novel was written by strictly following the rules for characters, plot, style, and themes of a particular genre, surely it cannot be judged a great novel, no matter how enjoyable. But what about literary novels? What makes a literary novel great?

The beginning of my approach is to ask: What do most great writers of literary novels have in common? What I have found in my study of over one hundred great writers is that they all show signs of having a writing process which involves a normal version of multiple personality.

But since I infer that over ninety percent of all novelists have a normal version of multiple personality—and that would include both the great and the mediocre—how would knowing their writing process help to distinguish them?

Moreover, how would anyone know a particular writer’s process, especially since even writers themselves have only a partial awareness of it?

I don’t have the answer. But at least I do have the question.

“Don Quixote” by Cervantes (post 5): At Yale, Professor Roberto González Echevarría makes four contradictory interpretations of Don Quixote’s madness.

Down-to-Earth Madness

“…literary madness is not sufficient for Cervantes, so he gives us more about [Don Quixote’s] mental condition…What I mean is, this is not an allegorical madman; this is a particular madman with a specific illness…It is not just a literary madness” (1, p. 39).

Transcendental Madness

“Don Quixote’s most original feature as a character of fiction is his insanity. It gives him a certain transcendence. He is truly the first insane protagonist in Western literature; there have been others since but none with this kind of transcendental form of madness” (1, p. 141).

Bubble or Dream Madness

“Don Quixote returns home…to the familiar, to the place where he was Alonso Quixano, where he was sane. This makes the entire series of episodes that make up the whole book, his madness, all the more like a bubble or a dream” (1, p. 332).

Metaphor for Life’s Unreality

“So Don Quixote’s death as Don Quixote and his rebirth as Alonso Quixano are not enough to close the book; Alonso Quixano also had to die, but only if the theme of the book is—as I believe it is—the unreality of worldly life and our hope for a real life after death” (1, pp. 333-334).

Comment

As the professor says, “this is a particular madman with a specific illness…It is not just a literary madness.” So why doesn’t he discuss this particular madman’s specific illness? To say that “the theme of the book is…the unreality of worldly life and our hope for a real life after death” is to avoid the issue.

1. Roberto González Echevarría. Cervantes’ Don Quixote. Based on the popular open course at Yale University. New Haven, Yale University Press, 2015.

Jeanette Winterson (post 2) adds that various writers have written of their regular self as being another character; that is, just one of their multiple personalities.

“My first novel Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit uses a character called Jeanette…Henry Miller, Philip Roth, Paul Auster and Milan Kundera have all used themselves as their own aliases…Beckett” said, “this is me and not me, this is myself but it is someone else” (1).

1. Jeanette Winterson. “The malice and sexism behind the ‘unmasking’ of Elena Ferrante.” The Guardian, October 7, 2016. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/07/unmasking-elena-ferrante

Jeanette Winterson defends Elena Ferrante’s right to be two distinct personalities, because “Writing is an act of splitting…Writers are multiple personalities”

“And I go on calling Elena Ferrante Elena Ferrante because that is who she wishes to be. She has been very clear about why she has chosen to be two people – one of whom can be known through her books, and one of whom cannot be known at all. Writing is an act of splitting – like mercury. Writers are multiple personalities” (1).

1. Jeanette Winterson. “The malice and sexism behind the ‘unmasking’ of Elena Ferrante.” The Guardian, October 7, 2016. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/07/unmasking-elena-ferrante

T. S. Eliot (post 4): In a secret life, Eliot called himself “The Captain,” who may have been the alternate personality responsible for his pornographic poems.

“The flat Tom rented in early 1923 was to be the hub of his secret life…At Burleigh Mansions he underwent a metamorphosis: here he was no longer ‘Mr. Eliot,’ banker and dutiful husband, but ‘Captain Eliot,’ hero of the Colombo verses, captain of his crew…

“Osbert Sitwell noticed, when he visited Eliot in the ‘bizarre’ atmosphere of the Charing Cross Road flat, that ‘Visitors on arrival had to enquire at the porter’s lodge for ‘The Captain,’…

“ ‘Noticing how tired my host looked, I regarded him more closely, and was amazed to notice on his cheeks a dusting of green powder…I was all the more amazed at this discovery, because any deliberate dramatisation of his appearance was so plainly out of keeping with his character, and with his desire never to call attention to himself, that I was hardly willing, any more than if I had seen a ghost, to credit the evidence of my senses.’

“Osbert was almost ready to disbelieve what he had seen, but he went to tea with Virginia Woolf a few days later. ‘She asked me, rather pointedly, if I had seen Tom lately, and when I said ‘Yes’ asked me—because she too was anxious for someone to confirm or rebut what she thought she had seen—whether I had observed the green powder on his face—so there was corroboration!’ Osbert and Virginia were apparently equally astounded, and although they discussed Tom’s use of cosmetics at considerable length, could find no way of explaining his ‘extraordinary and fantastical pretence’…He remained mystified: Osbert never did discover why T. S. Eliot called himself ‘The Captain’ and wore make-up…(1, pp. 356-358).

“As a student at Harvard, he began circulating his Columbo and Bolo jingles between about 1908 and 1914. For men only, and degrading women, Jews and blacks, they offer the spectacle of a penis so mighty it can rip a “whore” “from cunt to navel”. This revel in violence is varied by the antics of the sex-mad King Bolo and his Big Black Kween, whose bum is as big as a soup tureen…

“At first, when I came upon the Bolovian Court and Columbo and his crew, I assumed that they were a juvenile aberration. The third volume of Letters (covering the period of Eliot’s conversion to the Anglican faith in June 1927) presents a challenge to this. For the obscene verse that Eliot continued to write and disseminate as late as the age of 44 is not, in his own post-conversion view, an aberration” (2).

Perhaps “The Captain” was an alternate personality responsible for Eliot’s Colombo poems.

1. Carole Seymour-Jones. Painted Shadow: The Life of Vivienne Eliot, first wife of T. S. Eliot. New York, Anchor/Random House, 2001.

2. Lyndall Gordon. “T S Eliot and the sexual wasteland.” NewStatesman, 20 November 2015. http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2015/11/t-s-eliot-and-sexual-wasteland

Goethe (post 2): German literary giant said he was “a collective singular consisting of several persons with the same name,” which is multiple personality.

The quotation from Goethe about himself is taken from the review of a new biography.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/16/books/review/goethe-biography-rudiger-safranski.html

I previously discussed Goethe’s first major work in the following post:

February 21, 2015

Goethe’s The Sufferings of Young Werther: Main Character Has Both Depression and Multiple Personality

In Goethe’s autobiography, he says that he wrote “Werther in four weeks,” and that he wrote it “more or less unconsciously, like a sleepwalker” (1, p. 116). That is, more or less, he had dissociative amnesia—a symptom of multiple personality—for doing the writing.

That the novel was inspired by real-life experiences and events is well known. Goethe, himself, had been infatuated with a married woman. And a man Goethe had known had committed suicide in a similar situation. Moreover, the main character is given the exact same birthday as the author.

The novel itself is about Werther, a young man who commits suicide, because he is infatuated with a young woman (Lotte) he can’t have. This seemingly simple scenario is extremely puzzling for four reasons: First, before Werther meets Lotte, he is explicitly told that she is already engaged to be married. Second, she is maternal, not flirtatious. Third, he has no sexual feelings for her: “She is sacred to me. All lust falls silent in her presence” (1, p. 29). Fourth, his moods, attitudes, and even his abilities are puzzlingly inconsistent and contradictory.

The inconsistency of his moods is illustrated by the fact that during the same period of time that he says “I’ve never been happier” (1, p. 30), he also has “moments when I feel like putting a gun to my head!” (1, p. 29). This kind of inconsistency cannot be accounted for by clinical depression or bipolar disorder, but it could represent the contrary attitudes of two alternate identities.

The inconsistency of his abilities—he is an artist—is illustrated by the fact that on the same day he says he’s never been happier, he says “I’ve begun Lotte’s portrait three times, and three times I’ve made a mess of it. That depresses me all the more because not long ago I was very good at doing likenesses” (1, p. 30). Inconsistency of abilities may be a symptom of multiple personality, since different identities may not have the same talents.

An illustration of out-of-character behavior: On one occasion, “I become boisterously foolish and play pranks and do a lot of confused stuff,” which comes across as so odd that the next day Lotte comments, “You are frightful when you’re so merry” (1, p. 32). His behavior makes no sense to either Werther or Lotte, because it is probably done by an alternate identity, possibly child-aged, whom neither of them recognizes.

Werther says, “My diary, which I have neglected for some time, fell into my hands again today, and I am amazed at how knowingly I went into all this, step by step! How I have always seen my situation so clearly and yet have acted like a child” (1, p. 33). His behavior may have been by a child-aged alternate identity, but his diary was written by an adult self. And the identity telling us about this is apparently different from both of them.

“The ease with which we turn over a hand: that’s the way I change” (1, p. 59).

“I am in a state that must have been experienced by those unfortunate creatures who were once thought to be ridden by an evil demon. At times it takes hold of me…” (1, p. 76). “I frighten myself! Isn’t my love for her the most sacred, chaste, brotherly love?…Oh, how truthfully those men felt who attributed such contradictory effects to alien powers!” (1, p. 77). See past posts on “possession” as really being multiple personality.

Conventional wisdom, psychiatrically speaking, is that Goethe is an example of the relationship between depression and creativity (2). And both he and his character, Werther, certainly did have depression. But depression, per se, cannot explain the puzzling inconsistencies and contradictions discussed in this post. Multiple personality can.

1. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The Sufferings of Young Werther. Translated and Edited by Stanley Corngold. A Norton Critical Edition. New York, WW Norton & Company, 2013.
2. Holm-Hadulla, R.M., et al., Depression and creativity—The case of the german poet, scientist and statesman J. W. v. Goethe, J. Affect. Disord. (2010), doi:10.1016/j.jad.2010.05.007

“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T. S. Eliot (post 3): How does this poem differ from the incoherent rambling of someone with blatant psychosis?

If I had been shown this poem as an example of the writing of a prospective patient, my first impression would have been that the person was psychotic, because the poem makes no sense.

However, if I were then told that the author was a normally functioning person, I would have revised my opinion, because, after all, if I ignore the poem’s incoherence, I must admit that its use of language is sophisticated and appealing.

But if I were then told that this was the first major poem of a Nobel Prize winner, I would have had to look for something more than an appealing way with words.

I’m sorry if I seem to have the same answer for everything—I really don’t, when not discussing the issues of this blog—but I think that what gives this poem its psychological depth and intrigue is its unacknowledged multiple personality.

To readers of this poem who, knowingly or unknowingly, have multiple personality themselves, the poem will seem, somehow, deeply true. And to those readers who do not have multiple personality, the poem may seem to have a hidden, intriguing, complex intelligence.

“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T. S. Eliot (post 2): Interpretation suggested by Eliot’s statement that “You and I” are alternate personalities.

As previously discussed, Eliot, himself, was not of one mind about the meaning of this poem, so far be it from me to claim to understand it. And since I’ve read very little about how others have interpreted this poem, I don’t know whether the following will be old or new.

The poem’s first lines:

“Let us go then, you and I, 

When the evening is spread out against the sky 

Like a patient etherized upon a table; 

Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets…” (1). 

Although the punctuation appears to indicate that “the evening” is “Like a patient…,” I interpret the lines to mean that “you and I” are “Like a patient…,” because people can get etherized (not evenings), and “you and I” are alternate personalities of a single person (see prior post), the single, etherized patient.

What is the significance of “etherized”? Ether is an old, obsolete anesthetic, but it also has a history as a recreational drug (2) to which Eliot’s first wife was addicted (3). I don’t know whether Eliot ever experimented with ether, and he started writing this poem in 1910, five years before he got married. But he may have heard of its recreational use, so his use of it in this poem may indicate that “you and I” are in a drugged, trance, or altered state of consciousness. The poem is about their “trip” on ether.

The poem’s refrain:

“In the room the women come and go 

Talking of Michelangelo.”

suggests that “you and I” are not really going anywhere, but remain in a room where women come and go.

Line 31:

“Time for you and time for me,”

suggests that alternate personalities “you and I” will each have his own time in control.

The last stanza begins with “We,” giving a final emphasis to the idea that “you and I” go together.

1. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T. S. Eliot. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/detail/44212

2. Wikipedia. “Ether addiction.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ether_addiction

3. Louis Menand. “The Women Come and Go: The love song of T. S. Eliot.” The New Yorker, September 30, 2002. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/09/30/the-women-come-and-go

“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T. S. Eliot: In the first line—“Let us go then, you and I”—the “you and I” may refer to Prufrock’s alternate personalities.

“Eliot offered different identifications. At some time in the 1950s, he answered the enquirer that ‘anything I say now must be somewhat conjectural, as it was written so long ago that my memory may deceive me; but I am prepared to assert that ‘you’ in The Love Song is merely some friend or companion, presumably of the male sex, whom the speaker is at the moment addressing…’ On the other hand, in a 1962 interview, Eliot said that Prufrock was in part a man of about forty and in part himself, and that he was employing the notion of the split personality…

“But the immediate source for ‘you and I’ is likely to have been Bergson’s Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience (1889), published in translation in 1910…In the Essai, Bergson develops the idea of a double self: one aspect being the everyday self, experiencing common reality; the other, a deeper self, attuned to profound truths, and normally in subjugation to the superficial self” (1, pp. 48-49).

“Frederick Locke contends that Prufrock himself is suffering from multiple personalities of sorts…” (2). Laurence Perrine writes "The 'you and I' of the first line are divided parts of Prufrock's own nature” (2).

Comment

Why did Eliot, speaking about the poem in a 1950s interview, have to conjecture and presume what he had meant? Why didn’t he know for certain who “you” is in his poem? And why did he give a different explanation in the 1962 interview? Perhaps different personalities were answering the question in the two interviews.

1. B. C. Southam. A Guide to the Selected Poems of T. S. Eliot, 6th ed. New York, Harcourt Brace, 1996.

2. Wikipedia. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Love_Song_of_J._Alfred_Prufrock

“Don Quixote” by Cervantes (post 4): A Novel about The Novel, in which Don Quixote is novelist with multiple personality, and Sancho Panza the reader.

One of the most common pieces of advice given by established novelists to aspiring novelists is to read, read, read (works of fiction). Most novelists are avid readers. And this is true of Don Quixote. (He has been an avid reader of stories about knights-errant and chivalry.)

Another thing novelists must do, while they are writing a novel, is believe in the reality of their novel’s world and characters. It must all feel real to them. How real? As more than one novelist has said, “more real than real.”

Meanwhile, the reader, like Sancho Panza, in the hope of being amply rewarded, must go along for the ride.

“Madness”

Don Quixote, who represents novelists, often seems crazy. But it is not just any kind of madness. What kind is it?

He is described as having switched from his regular personality, Alonso Quixano, to an alternate personality, Don Quixote—who has his own view of reality, as do most alternate personalities—and as finally switching back to his regular personality, Alonso Quixano.

Switching between personalities is NOT seen in schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. Indeed, it is not seen in ANY psychosis listed in the psychiatric diagnostic manual. It is seen ONLY in the nonpsychotic, dissociative identity disorder, multiple personality.

I don’t trivialize the clinical version of multiple personality, which may involve very serious distress and dysfunction. But novelists, like most people with multiple personality, have a normal version. That is, they have alternate personalities, etc., but do not have clinically significant distress and dysfunction. And without the latter, the former may be used to advantage.

“Don Quixote” by Cervantes (post 3): Don Quixote switches back to his regular personality, Alonso Quixano, confirming the diagnosis of multiple personality.

In post 2, I interpreted the episode in which Don Quixote was in a mountain, planning to purposely injure himself on rocks, as alluding to the biblical story in which Jesus meets the madman Legion, who has been in a mountain, bruising himself with stones. Legion got his name, because he was possessed by a legion of demons.

My interpretation is supported by subsequent use of the phrase “legion of demons” (1, p. 219) and by the episode at the end of the novel—while Don Quixote is in the process of reverting to his true identity of Alonso Quixano—in which he is trampled by “a herd of over six hundred swine” (1, p. 508). In the New Testament, when Jesus exorcises Legion’s legion of demons, Jesus sends the exorcised demons into a herd of swine.

At the end of the novel, the protagonist says, “…though in my life I was reputed a madman, yet in my death this opinion is not confirmed…I am no longer Don Quixote of La Mancha, but Alonso Quixano…I now abhor all profane stories of knight-errantry…” (1, p. 523).

Thus, Alonso Quixano’s “madness” had consisted of switching to an alternate personality, Don Quixote, and his “cure” consists of switching back to his regular personality. The only psychiatric condition with personality switches is multiple personality.

1. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. Don Quixote. Translated, Abridged, and with an Introduction by Walter Starkie, and a New Afterword by Roberto González Echevarría. New York, Signet Classics, 2013.

“Don Quixote” by Cervantes (post 2): Madman in mountains, purposely wounding himself, raises question of who was Bible madman Legion’s Dulcinea.

“As [Don Quixote and Sancho Panza] were conversing, they arrived at the foot of a lofty mountain…This was the place the Knight of the Rueful Figure chose for his penance [in honor of Lady Dulcinea]…‘I have yet to tear my garments…and bang my head against these rocks, and other things of the kind which will amaze you.’

“ ‘For the love of God,’ said Sancho, ‘take care how you go knocking your head against rocks…’

“ ‘I thank you, friend Sancho, for your good intentions…but I want you to realize that all these actions of mine are not for mockery…for…otherwise, I should be breaking the rules of chivalry, which forbid me to tell a lie…And so the knocks on the head must be real hard knocks without anything imaginary about them…(1, pp. 129-130).

New Testament

“And when [Jesus] had come…there met him…a man with an unclean spirit…Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always…bruising himself with stones…And Jesus asked him, ‘What is your name?’ He replied, ‘My name is Legion; for we are many’ ” (Mark 5:2-9).

Jesus exorcises Legion of his many unclean spirits (demon possession), which are today interpreted as alternate personalities (search “Legion” for past posts).

Comment

In his description of Don Quixote in the mountains, intending to bruise himself with rocks, Cervantes may have been making the above biblical allusion. If so, was Cervantes ahead of his time in interpreting Legion as having multiple personality? I don’t know.

In any case, Cervantes makes me wonder who was Legion’s Dulcinea.

1. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. Don Quixote. Translated, Abridged, and with an Introduction by Walter Starkie, and a New Afterword by Roberto González Echevarría. New York, Signet Classics, 2013.

“Don Quixote” by Cervantes: What kind of “madness” sees windmills as giants; maintains relationship with Sancho Panza; adopts named, alternate personality?

Seeing Windmills as Giants

People with a psychosis like schizophrenia would NOT mistake a windmill for a giant. But there are two kinds of nonpsychotic people who might: 1. highly hypnotizable people who are given the suggestion that they will see windmills as giants, and 2. a child who thinks he is a superhero who fights giants, and substitutes windmills for giants.

As a general rule, persons with schizophrenia are relatively low in hypnotizability, while persons with multiple personality are relatively high in hypnotizability. Children are more hypnotizable than adults. Multiple personality starts in childhood. And adults with multiple personality have certain thought processes rooted in childhood.

Presumably, Don Quixote (who may have had preexisting multiple personality since childhood) has been virtually hypnotized by books on knights-errant and chivalry.

Relationships

Sancho Panza often thinks that Don Quixote has crazy ideas. So why are the two men able to maintain their relationship? Not only because Quixote has promised to reward Sancho by giving him an island, since a promise from a person with true psychosis would have been seen as worthless. The reasons are 1. Quixote often does make sense, 2. Quixote’s fantasies about knights-errant and chivalry are common in their culture, and 3. Quixote is often attentive and responsive to Sancho’s feelings and needs.

People with untreated schizophrenia (or any true psychosis) are relatively impaired in interpersonal relationships, while people with a dissociative disorder like multiple personality may be engaging, sometimes entangling.

Alternate Names and Personalities

Typically, people with schizophrenia do not adopt new names and personalities; whereas, people with multiple personality do.

President Trump is said to watch a lot of television for someone with all his responsibilities: Does he watch TV to fill in multiple-personality memory gaps?

Trump’s love for watching TV has even earned a New Yorker cartoon: http://www.newyorker.com/cartoons/daily-cartoon-022217-trump-watching-tv

Common explanations for his inordinate amount of TV-watching include 1. that he doesn’t read books or make much use of a computer, so he watches TV for information, 2. that he views life as a “reality-TV show,” 3. that he is guided by how people on TV react to issues, and 4. that when people discuss him and his policies, he learns who are his enemies and friends, and also gets narcissistic gratification.

I would like to add speculation that he may watch TV to find out what he and others have done and said, to fill in multiple-personality memory gaps.

“Regeneration Trilogy” by Pat Barker (post 7): Judging by portrayal of Billy Prior, the second and third novels of this trilogy were written by different personalities.

The handling of Billy Prior’s multiple personality in the second and third novels of this trilogy is so completely different, you would almost think that these two novels were written by different people.

In the third novel of this trilogy, Billy Prior’s previously emphasized, seriously distressing (to him), multiple personality (see past posts) is now briefly mentioned as a joke and then completely forgotten.

In Chapter One of The Ghost Road (1), while he is under evaluation by the military board to decide whether he is fit to return to combat (WWI), Billy Prior, who wants to return to combat, thinks:

“And really, amidst the general insanity, was it fair to penalize a man merely because in conditions of extreme stress he tended to develop two separate personalities? You could argue the army was getting a bargain” (1, p. 438).

In the rest of this novel, chapters two through eighteen, he does not have any more of his previously frequent memory gaps—even under conditions of extreme stress, in combat, which is described at length—and the whole issue of his multiple personality is completely forgotten. Let me emphasize, he is not described as overcoming, or having recovered from, his multiple personality: his previously highlighted condition is simply never mentioned again.

This remarkable phenomenon—multiple personality is featured in the first half of a work, but is almost completely forgotten in the second half of that work—is surprisingly common. In fiction, I described it in past posts on Graham Greene, Gillian Flynn, and Joyce Carol Oates. In nonfiction, multiple personality is repeatedly described in Volume One of Doris Lessing’s autobiography, but is absent from Volume Two.

1. Pat Barker. The Regeneration Trilogy: Regeneration [1991], The Eye in the Door [1993], The Ghost Road [1995]. London, Viking/Penguin, 1996.

“Regeneration Trilogy” by Pat Barker (post 6): Dr. Rivers says his having alternate personalities is normal, even preferable, since they are aware of each other.

Dr. Rivers (psychiatrist, neurologist, sociocultural anthropologist)

“Perhaps it was his own experience of duality that formed the link, for certainly in the years before the war [WWI] he had experienced a splitting of personality as profound as any suffered by Siegfried [Sassoon, the warrior/anti-war poet]. It had been not merely a matter of living two different lives, divided between the dons of Cambridge and the missionaries and headhunters of Melanesia, but of being a different person in the two places. It was his Melanesian self he preferred, but his attempts to integrate that self into his way of life in England had produced nothing but frustration and misery. Perhaps, contrary to what was usually supposed, duality was the stable state; the attempt at integration, dangerous. Certainly Siegfried had found it so” (1, p. 392)… “Siegfried had always coped with the war by being two people: the anti-war poet and pacifist; the bloodthirsty, efficient company commander. The dissociation couldn’t be called pathological, since experience gained in one state was available to the other” (1, p. 390).

Dr. Rivers uses the words “duality” and “splitting of personality” advisedly, because he experiences two senses of self and ways of thinking that go beyond the differences that people ordinarily experience in different moods and circumstances. What he experiences are two different senses of personhood.

His having more than one sense of personhood fulfills Criterion A for the diagnosis of multiple personality. Criterion B is memory gaps; that is, when one personality has amnesia for the period of time that another personality was in control. Dr. Rivers, in denying Criterion B for himself and Sassoon—“since experience gained in one state was available to the other”—disavows multiple personality, strictly speaking.

However, in multiple personality, there are usually some alternate personalities who are co-conscious and share knowledge. But earlier in the novel, Dr. Rivers did acknowledge that he had amnesia for some kind of traumatic event at age five, and that since then his ability to visualize all past experiences has been grossly impaired. Thus, he may fulfill Criterion B  (memory gaps) for multiple personality; and also Criterion C (distress and/or dysfunction), in regard to the dysfunction of visualization. In short, there is circumstantial evidence that he may have other alternate personalities who are not co-conscious and do not share what they know and remember. Nevertheless, he is highly functional and not in significant distress from these things, so I would say that his multiple personality is a normal version.

Further Comment

The three main characters—Dr. Rivers, Siegfried Sassoon, and Billy Prior—all appear to have multiple personality, differing only in severity. In terms of the distinction I make in this blog, Billy Prior has clinical multiple personality (Criterion A, Criterion B, and Criterion C, distress and dysfunction). Dr. Rivers has a normal version of multiple personality (Criterion A, probably Criterion B, but not Criterion C). Sassoon is intermediate.

I still have more than a third of the trilogy to read, but what I have read so far raises these questions: Why would a novelist have three main characters with different degrees of multiple personality? Moreover, the spokesman for the three, Dr. Rivers, says, “Perhaps, contrary to what was usually supposed, duality was the stable state”; that is, his normal version of multiple personality is the best way for a person to be. Why would a novelist be of a mind to write a masterpiece which takes that position? (Because most novelists, themselves, have a normal version of multiple personality?)

The idea of duality—multiple personality with only two personalities—is a literary oversimplification. Although duality may seem to be the case at the beginning of the diagnostic process, almost every person with multiple personality turns out to have more than two personalities.

1. Pat Barker. The Regeneration Trilogy: Regeneration [1991], The Eye in the Door [1993], The Ghost Road [1995]. London, Viking/Penguin, 1996.