Jean-Paul Sartre’s “indeterminacy of the self”: Times Literary Supplement on Nobel Prize novelist-philosopher misses multiple personality in his novel “Nausea”

October 24, 2017

The Times Literary Supplement

Jean-Paul Sartre and the demands of freedom

by Gary Cox

“…He continued studying and writing, however, and by 1938 finally made his name with the publication of his cult existentialist novel, Nausea…

“We do not exist simply in our own right as chairs do, but always in relation to – and as the negation of – our situation. A chair is, but we must constantly create ourselves over time through our actions. We have to choose who we are each moment by what we choose to do, without ever being able to become a fixed entity. This is what existentialists call the indeterminacy of the self. The self is not a thing, it is a being unavoidably caught up in a constant temporal process of becoming.”

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/jean-paul-sartre-cox-demands-freedom/

However, the indeterminacy of the self portrayed in Sartre’s novel Nausea involves the dissociative fugues and sudden transformations of a person with multiple personality, as previously discussed in the following post:

July 14, 2015

Nobel Prize novelist Jean-Paul Sartre’s Nausea:  The novel’s opening—saying the protagonist's “sudden transformations” must be explained—is totally forgotten

“Sudden Transformations”

The novel begins with the protagonist’s worry about his “sudden transformations.” For example, due to some kind of change that suddenly came over him, he left France and went to Indo-China, and then, after six years, he suddenly reverted to his regular self and returned to France.

He is trying to understand what is wrong with him, and is worried that he will have another “sudden transformation”:

“I have to admit that I am subject to these sudden transformations…That is what has given my life this halting, incoherent aspect. When I left France, for example, there were a lot of people who said I had gone off on a sudden impulse…

“And then, all of a sudden, I awoke from a sleep which had lasted six years…I couldn’t understand why I was in Indo-China. What was I doing there?…[And so he returned to France]…

“If I am not mistaken, and if all the signs which are piling up are indications of a fresh upheaval in my life, well then, I am frightened…I’m afraid of what is going to be born and take hold of me and carry me off—I wonder where? Shall I have to go away again…Shall I awake in a few months, a few years, exhausted, disappointed…I should like to understand myself properly before it is too late” (1, pp. 14-15).

Author Forgets Sudden Transformations

Amazingly, the rest of the novel makes no mention of sudden transformations. Instead, the protagonist’s problem becomes “nausea,” which eventually leads to his epiphany about existence (1, p. 182), “absurdity” (1, p. 185), and “contingency” (1, p. 188), and his discovery that he might prevent Nausea by becoming a novelist (1, pp. 245-246).

Multiple Personality

The protagonist is described at the beginning of the novel as having the two cardinal symptoms of multiple personality: personality switches and amnesia. And he did not have just the one six-year fugue. He says that he is prone to these sudden transformations, which are what has given his life its “halting, incoherent aspect.”

1. Jean-Paul Sartre. Nausea [1938]. London, Penguin Books, 2000.

Comment

The Times Literary Supplement essay refers to Sartre’s Nausea as “a cult existentialist novel,” implying that it is not an obscure work, but is well known. However, apparently, little attention has been paid to the fact that the protagonist has dissociative fugues, a characteristic symptom of multiple personality (also known as “dissociative identity”). Search “dissociative fugue” in this blog for past posts on the subject. In short, the protagonist’s “sudden transformations” are switches from one personality to another.

Does this mean that Sartre had multiple personality and that existentialism is a reflection of it? I do not know enough about Sartre or existentialism to offer an opinion. All I know is that the protagonist of Sartre’s Nausea has multiple personality: his “sudden transformations” portrayed at the beginning of the novel and then forgotten.