“The Red and the Black” by Stendhal (post 5): “Julien possessed one of those stunning memories so often linked to stupidity,” hypnosis, multiple personality.

The protagonist, Julien Sorel, is introduced as a nineteen-year-old with “hypocrisy” and “determination…to make his fortune…So the thing is: become a priest” (1, p. 22-23). His type of memory is highlighted:

“Julien possessed one of those stunning memories so often linked to stupidity. To win over Chélan, the old parish priest, on whom he saw very clearly his future depended, he had learned by heart the entire New Testament in Latin; he also knew Monsieur de Maistre’s On the Pope—and had no more belief in the one than in the other” (1, pp. 19-20).

In a recent post, I mentioned the well-known association between high hypnotizability and multiple personality. And in a number of past posts I have mentioned that persons with multiple personality may have the surprising combination of both unusually good memory and unusually bad memory; that is, generally superb memory (like Julien’s), but also the absentmindedness, amnesia, and memory gaps caused when one personality does not recall what happened when another personality was in control.

For example, that combination was true of Mark Twain, who was known for an excellent memory, but also remarkable episodes of absentmindedness. (To see past posts, search “absent-mindedness” and “memory gaps.”)

Is Stendhal’s narrator correct to link “those stunning memories” with, in some sense, “stupidity”? Yes. A classic paper on characteristics of highly hypnotizable persons describes such persons as having unusually good memory—sometimes verging on total recall—but also says that their memories tend to be rote, photographic, and uncritical (2).

In short, Julien is described as having the kind of memory found in highly hypnotizable persons. And persons with multiple personality usually have high hypnotizability. So Julien’s kind of memory raises the possibility of multiple personality.

But does the type of memory ascribed to Julien foreshadow what will happen later, or is it just narrative chit chat? I will keep reading.

1. Stendhal. The Red and the Black: A Chronicle of 1830. Translated by Burton Raffel. New York, The Modern Library, 2003.

2. Herbert Spiegel. “The Grade 5 Syndrome: The Highly Hypnotizable Person.” The International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis. Volume XXII, Number 4, October 1974, pp. 303-319.