“Trilby” by George du Maurier (post 2): Why is Svengali’s initial hypnosis of Trilby for the purpose of relieving her headaches, not for curing her tone deafness?

Since Trilby had been introduced to the reader as suffering from tone deafness, while Svengali had been introduced to the reader as an extraordinary musician who has given voice lessons to another young woman so she could be a singer, the reader might have expected that Svengali would initially use hypnosis to cure Trilby’s tone deafness (and then teach her to be a singer).

Why, then, is Trilby suddenly given a bad headache (it now appears that she is prone to have them) for Svengali to relieve by hypnosis? As I said in the last post, the author seems to have an ulterior motive: to build a case for Trilby’s having multiple personality.

I have just searched “headache” in this blog to see what I have previously said about it in regard to multiple personality, and what follows is a past post that includes discussion of something that Harry Potter has in common with Trilby: recurrent headaches.

November 21, 2015

J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (post 2): The last chapter, “The Man with Two Faces,” has overt, but unnamed, multiple personality.

The villain, the evil wizard, Voldemort, makes his first appearance in the Harry Potter series at the climax of this first book, as an alternate personality:

“And to Harry’s horror, [an alien] voice answered, and the voice seemed to come from [Professor] Quirrell himself”…”Where there should have been a back to Quirrell’s head, there was a [second] face”…” ‘See what I have become?’ the face said…’I have form only when I can share another’s body’…” (1, pp. 314-315).

Meanwhile, Harry, who has had recurrent headaches throughout the book, has one again, but now accompanied by voices in his head:

“Harry’s…head felt as though it was about to split in two”…”the pain in Harry’s head was building — he couldn’t see — he could only hear Quirrell’s terrible shrieks and Voldemort’s yells of ‘KILL HIM! KILL HIM!’ and other voices, maybe in Harry’s own head, crying, ‘Harry! Harry!’ “ (1, pp. 316-317).

Just as the alien voice coming from Quirrell is the voice of an alternate personality, so, too, would be the voices in Harry’s head. This looks like a foreshadowing of an eventual revelation that Harry, too, has multiple personality (possibly also overt, but possibly also not named or acknowledged as such).

Beside the voices in Harry’s head, his headache—“his head felt as though it was about to split in two”—may be a symptom of multiple personality, as described in a standard textbook:

“The single most common neurological symptom reported in MPD [multiple personality disorder] is headache…The headaches are usually described as extremely painful…Several patients have described these headaches to me as ‘blinding’…a number of therapists have associated the presence of headaches with conflicts and struggles for control among alter personalities…” (2, pp. 65-66).

Although the Harry Potter books depict multiple personality, they don’t name or acknowledge it, so I assume that Rowling hadn't read up on it. How, then, did she know that alien voices in the head—alternate personalities speaking from behind the scenes—are a common symptom of multiple personality, and that splitting and blinding headaches may happen when alternate personalities struggle with each other for control? Maybe she knew it from personal experience.

1. J. K. Rowling. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. London, Bloomsbury, 1997/2004.

2. Frank W. Putnam MD. Diagnosis and Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder. New York, The Guilford Press, 1989.