Blog Visits, Multiple Personality, and the United Kingdom: Land of Magic (J. M. Barrie, J. R. R. Tolkien, J. K. Rowling) and Ghosts (Shakespeare’s Hamlet)

During the four and a half years that I have been writing this blog, there has been a rough correlation between the nationality of the writers I discuss and the nations from which the blog is visited. For example, since my recent posts on a writer from Portugal, there have been more visits from Portugal.

The UK is the one exception. When I have discussed UK writers, there has rarely been any increase in visits from the UK. In fact, there have been very few visits from the UK at any time. And considering the large number of UK writers I have discussed, the lack of UK visitors has been striking.

Is there a boycott by the UK? Since the first writer I discussed was Charles Dickens, do they hold it against me? While there could be a little of that, my main hypothesis is that the United Kingdom does not believe in alternate personalities: they believe in magic and ghosts.

I don’t know the latest views of British psychology and psychiatry. I recall seeing something in recent years about British research with brain imaging that tended to confirm the validity of multiple personality. But I have the impression that the British Journal of Psychiatry has consistently promoted derision.

This is not to say that multiple personality is popular in the United States, where I would describe the attitude as mixed. Most of the modern psychiatric literature on multiple personality comes from the USA, but Mark Twain scholars in the United States are no more interested in this blog than are Dickens scholars in England.

Yet I think that the UK may go beyond skepticism, and has a more than average belief in magic, ghosts, and spirits.