Toni Morrison (post 13): Neither Morrison herself nor Wikipedia’s entry for “Beloved” realizes that her characters in Beloved have multiple personality.

Wikipedia, citing the same article by Professor Lynda Koolish (1) that I quoted in the previous post, says:

“Because of the experiences of slavery, most slaves repressed these memories in an attempt to forget the past. This repression and dissociation from the past causes a fragmentation of the self and a loss of true identity. Sethe, Paul D. and Denver all experience this loss of self, which could only be remedied by the acceptance of the past and the memory of their original identities. Beloved serves to remind these characters of their repressed memories, eventually causing the reintegration of their selves” (2).

Note: Wikipedia fails to mention that the article it cites for the above passage is very explicit in labelling what the characters demonstrate and experience as “Multiple Personality Disorder” (1).

To make matters worse, Wikipedia uses the phrase “repressed memories,” a favorite phrase of multiple personality deniers, who don’t understand the distinction between Sigmund Freud’s “repression” and Pierre Janet’s “dissociation.” Multiple personality involves Janet’s dissociation into alternate personalities, not Freud’s repression into the “unconscious.”

Wikipedia and others are inclined to ignore that the characters in Beloved have multiple personality, per se, because the novel itself never mentions the term “multiple personality” (nor any synonym like “split personality” or “dissociative identity”).

And why does Toni Morrison, herself, never explicitly acknowledge that her characters have multiple personality?

Indeed, why do the works of so many of the writers discussed in this blog have unacknowledged multiple personality? (Search “unacknowledged multiple personality” and “gratuitous multiple personality.”)

My hypothesis is that most novelists have a normal version of multiple personality, and since they, themselves, are not mentally ill, they don’t relate what they have or its manifestation in their characters to the psychiatric condition.

1. Lynda Koolish. “To Be Loved and Cry Shame”: A Psychological Reading of Toni Morrison’s Beloved. MELUS, Vol. 26, No. 4, African American Literature (Winter, 2001), pp. 169-195.

2. Wikipedia. “Beloved (novel).” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beloved_(novel)