Imaginary Language Worlds of J. R. R. Tolkien and Théodore Flournoy: Imaginary language worlds may be created by mythopoetic, alternate personalities.

J. R. R. Tolkien (1892-1973) said that the story of The Lord of the Rings was of secondary importance to his main interest, the creation of imaginary languages:

“The philologist and author J. R. R. Tolkien created a number of constructed languages. Inventing languages (called glossopoeia by Tolkien, paralleling his idea of mythopoeia or myth-making) was a lifelong occupation for Tolkien, starting in his teens…

“Glossopoeia was Tolkien's hobby for most of his life. At a little over 13, he helped construct a sound substitution cypher known as Nevbosh, 'new nonsense', which grew to include some elements of actual invented language. Notably, Tolkien claimed that this was not his first effort in invented languages. Shortly thereafter, he developed a true invented language called Naffarin which contained elements that would survive into his later languages, which he continued to work on until his death more than 65 years later. Language invention had always been tightly connected to the mythology that Tolkien developed, as he found that a language could not be complete without the history of the people who spoke it, just as these people could never be fully realistic if imagined only through English and as speaking English. Tolkien therefore took the stance of a translator and adaptor rather than that of the original author of his works…

“Tolkien wrote in one of his letters: "what I think is a primary ‘fact’ about my work, that it is all of a piece, and fundamentally linguistic in inspiration. [. . .] It is not a ‘hobby’, in the sense of something quite different from one’s work, taken up as a relief-outlet. The invention of languages is the foundation. The ‘stories’ were made rather to provide a world for the languages than the reverse…I should have preferred to write in ‘Elvish’. But, of course, such a work as The Lord of the Rings has been edited and only as much ‘language’ has been left in as I thought would be stomached by readers.”

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_constructed_by_J._R._R._Tolkien

In 1899 (English trans. 1901) Théodore Flournoy, an eminent psychologist, published a widely read book on a case of multiple personality in which the person created imaginary languages:

From India to the Planet Mars: A Case of Multiple Personality with Imaginary Languages by Théodore Flournoy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%A9odore_Flournoy

I cited that book in a past post:

September 25, 2015

Mythopoetic Function of Alternate Personalities: Illustrated by Famous Medium, Helene Smith, in Théodore Flournoy’s From India to the Planet Mars

How does the mind create fiction and myth? And how can we ever find out? Fiction writing is done in private. And even fiction writers, themselves, are not entirely sure how they do it, which suggests that it takes place in “the unconscious.”

What goes on in “the unconscious”? And why study mediums to find out? Because mediums make a public spectacle of what usually takes place in private and out of awareness. Mediums turn off their regular consciousness by going into a trance, allowing their “unconscious” to come out and have its say.

“The mythopoetic function…Its great explorer was Flournoy with his research on Helen Smith and other mediums” (1, p. 318).

From India to the Planet Mars

According to historian Sonu Shamdasani, in his Introduction: “At the end of the nineteenth century, many of the leading psychologists—Freud, Jung, Ferenczi, Bleuler, James, Myers, Janet, Bergson, Stanley Hall, Schrenck-Notzing, Moll, Dessoir, Richet, and Flournoy—frequented mediums…What took place in the seances enthralled the leading minds of the time, and had a crucial bearing on many of the most significant aspects of twentieth-century psychology, linguistics, philosophy, psychoanalysis, literature, and painting, not to mention psychical research…

“For [Frederic] Myers, whom Flournoy called the founder of subliminal psychology…in contradistinction to his contemporaries such as Freud and Janet, the unconscious, or as he termed it, the subliminal—the secondary personalities revealed in trance states, dreaming, crystal gazing, and automatic writing—potentially possessed a higher intelligence than one’s waking or supraliminal personality and often served to convey messages of guidance…

“Myers ended up embracing the spiritist hypothesis and attempted to unite science and religion in an overarching synthesis…Flournoy, by contrast, attempted to maintain a purely psychological viewpoint…

“For [William] James and Flournoy, the investigation of trance states was a central question if a psychology worthy of the name was to develop. Within this enterprise, the investigation of mediums held pride of place…

“The innovation of From India to the Planet Mars was that it was the first major study of what Myers called pseudo-possession, whose main goal was to disprove the supernatural origin of the phenomena and to give an account of their psychogenesis. In such a manner it established a devastating skeptical paradigm in psychical research…

“Cryptomnesia plays a crucial role in Flournoy’s analysis as the main alternative paradigm to the spiritualistic hypothesis…For Flournoy what was presented as a memory—in the case of Helene, of an anterior existence—in actuality represented a hidden and forgotten memory that had been through a process of subconscious elaboration…Spiritualists were up in arms about the book, for understandable reasons…

The “transition from spiritualism to multiple personality is very clearly developed in From India to the Planet Mars. While Flournoy rejects the extrapsychic existence of the figures in Helene’s trances, and regards them as intrapsychic, he still regards them as personalities…the psychologization of mediumship leads to a multiple personality model. From India to the Planet Mars was the first psychological study of multiple personality to become a best-seller…

“Throughout From India to the Planet Mars, Flournoy never ceases to marvel at the artistic and dramatic powers of Helene’s subconscious creative imagination. On one reading what is left of her romances when shorn of their spiritualistic garb is precisely art…"

The Introduction to From India to the Planet Mars concludes with this quotation from Ellenberger (Psychology Today, March 1973, p. 56), the historian of the unconscious quoted at the beginning of this post:

“Flournoy was a great explorer of the mythopoetic unconscious, particularly in his book From India to the Planet Mars…Today we seldom hear of the mythopoetic unconscious. What psychoanalysts call fantasies represent a minute part of mythopoetic manifestations. We have lost sight of the importance of this terrible power—a power that fathered epidemics of demonism, collective psychoses among witches, revelations of spiritualists, the so-called reincarnations of mediums, automatic writing, the mirages that lured generations of hypnotists, and the profuse literature of the subliminal imagination…unfortunately neither Freud nor Jung became aware of the mythopoetic unconscious” (2, pp. xi-li)

And note: The thing that mediumship makes public is that the mythopoetic “unconscious" is populated by, and is a function of, alternate personalities, who, even when behind-the-scenes, and out of the awareness of the regular self, are usually conscious, and often busy making things up.

1. Henri F. Ellenberger. The Discovery of the Unconscious: The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry. New York, Basic Books, 1970.

2. Théodore Flournoy. From India to the Planet Mars: A Case of Multiple Personality with Imaginary Languages [1899/1901]. With a Forward by C. G. Jung and Commentary by Mireille Cifali. Edited and Introduced by Sonu Shamdasani. Princeton N.J., Princeton University Press, 1994.

The only past post I have on J. R. R. Tolkien, aside from the recent one on the diagnosis of Gollum, is the following:

April 4, 2014

J. R. R. Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings, probably had Multiple Personality

Multiple personality’s childhood onset explains why it has a child’s way of thinking: imaginary companions and imaginary worlds (paracosm). Any adult who has created imaginary characters and worlds—especially when richly detailed, ultra-romantic, and/or fantastic—is likely to have had multiple personality.

Since these fictional characters and worlds are experienced as having minds of their own and as having actually existed, the writer, as Dickens put it, subjectively feels that he “didn’t invent it” (see June 2013 post).

And as J. R. R. Tolkien said, “They arose in my mind as ‘given’ things…always I had the sense of recording what was already ‘there’, somewhere: not of ‘inventing’” (1, p. 100).

If Tolkien had multiple personality, it would not be surprising if his characters had it, too. At least one does: Smeagol-Gollum.

Now, a writer’s multiple personality may or may not extend beyond his writing and into his relations with real people. Was Tolkien’s multiple personality ever evident in real life? The following suggests that it was:

“During his undergraduate days Tolkien developed his childhood interest in painting and drawing and began to show some skill at it, chiefly in the sketching of landscapes. He also paid a great deal of attention to handwriting and calligraphy, and became accomplished in many styles of manuscript. This interest was a combination of his enthusiasm for words and his artist’s eye, but it also reflected his many-sided personality, for as someone who knew him during these years remarked (with only slight exaggeration): ‘He had a different style of handwriting for each of his friends’” (1, p. 65).

Writing in different handwritings (under circumstances in which there is no reason to suspect that a person is faking) is often indicative of multiple personality.

Carpenter, Humphrey. J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 2000. [First published in Great Britain by George Allen & Unwin, 1977.]

I hope to read The Lord of the Rings. Even though Tolkien said that its story was of secondary importance to its invented languages, many people have enjoyed the story.