When Writing Book Reviews (post 2): Beware of missing the obvious—like Don Quixote’s diagnosis—when narrator and characters are unreliable or in denial.

As the following six brief posts make clear, Don Quixote’s diagnosis should be obvious: He changes his name and personality, and later changes his name and personality back, which only happens in multiple personality.

So why do most readers and reviewers accept the novel’s meaningless diagnosis of “madness” and ignore the obvious diagnosis of multiple personality? 

Because no narrator or character recognizes his multiple personality. And readers, including reviewers, tend to believe and ignore what the narrator and characters believe and ignore, a tendency that fiction writers depend on.

The following six brief posts explain and elaborate.

June 10, 2017

“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.

June 10, 2017

“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.

June 12, 2017

“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.

June 14, 2017

“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.

June 21, 2017

“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.

June 23, 2017

“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.