“Long Black Veil” by Jennifer Finney Boylan (post 11): Protagonist identifies with split personality Gollum and feels that the boy she was still lives inside her

“I’m a relic, though. That’s what I realize now. The world has become a safer place for trans people, for some of us anyhow…I set out to save the shire…and it has been saved. But not for me. ‘Gollum,’ I said, ‘Gollum’ ” (1, p. 230).

Her talk of saving the shire is a reference to the plot of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Her saying “Gollum, Gollum” is to quote Gollum, the multiple personality character from that novel with whom she apparently identifies, although she may not think of him in terms of diagnosis.

“But most of the time I think that the boy that I was still lives inside me, in spite of the woman’s life that came after. I hear his voice when I tell a joke, or raise my voice to sing some song…” (1, p. 287).

1. Jennifer Finney Boylan. Long Black Veil. New York, Crown, 2017.

“Long Black Veil” by Jennifer Finney Boylan (post 10): Mention of Mr. Frodo, from same novel as Gollum, the character with multiple personality

“But I don’t think there will be a return journey, Mr. Frodo” (1, p. 177) (2).

The above sentence confirms the author’s knowledge that Gollum, Judith’s dog, is named after the character from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings who is well known as having multiple personality.

Can Boylan be using the name “Gollum,” and then, by mentioning Frodo, remind the reader to what “Gollum” alludes, without meaning to raise the issue of multiple personality? It remains a possibility, as long as no narrator or character in Long Black Veil actually mentions multiple personality.

1. Jennifer Finney Boylan. Long Black Veil. New York, Crown, 2017.

2. Wikipedia. “Frodo Baggins.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frodo_Baggins

“Long Black Veil” by Jennifer Finney Boylan (post 9): Judith says that before sex-reassignment surgery, she had been “like a ghost or sentient mist”

According to the conventional view, the transsexual woman, prior to sex-reassignment surgery, already has a solid female consciousness.

But Judith says that prior to sex-reassignment surgery, she “had been more like a ghost, or some kind of sentient mist”:

“It occurred to me that after a while, the present trumps the past—that I had been a woman almost exactly as long as I had been a man, that I had been a mother for all but two of my son’s seventeen years, that whatever I had been, I had been something else for far longer. Plus, I had been solid, unlike my younger self, who had been more like a ghost, or some kind of sentient mist” (1, p. 147).

Is the conventional view wrong, or is Judith unconventional?

1. Jennifer Finney Boylan. Long Black Veil. New York, Crown, 2017.

“Long Black Veil” by Jennifer Finney Boylan (post 8): Judith (Quentin/Judith) and her husband have a dog named “Gollum,” a multiple personality allusion

Judith and her husband Jake have a dog named “Gollum” (1, p. 72).

Sméagol/Gollum is the character with two names in J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (search “Tolkien”). He often speaks of himself in the third person or as “we,” and clearly has a split personality (2).

1. Jennifer Finney Boylan. Long Black Veil. New York, Crown, 2017.

2. Wikipedia. “Gollum.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gollum

“Long Black Veil” by Jennifer Finney Boylan (post 7): Another character has an internal dialogue with an alternate personality that has a mind of its own

Rachel, the woman to whom Quentin had proposed, is a college professor who teaches a class on the Italian Renaissance. At a museum, she sees Leonardo’s St. John the Baptist, on loan from the Louvre, where she had seen it six times previously. Rachel feels that “the androgynous young man…looked directly into her soul”…making her feel…“lightheaded, transfixed” (1, p. 63).

For nine pages, Rachel engages in an internal dialogue with St. John the Baptist, who, among other things, says, “I just want you to become yourself” (1, p. 66).

So Quentin/Judith is not the only character in this novel who holds internal dialogues with alternate personalities—they appear to have minds of their own—who help them with relationships and identity.

1. Jennifer Finney Boylan. Long Black Veil. New York, Crown, 2017.

“Long Black Veil” by Jennifer Finney Boylan (post 6): Perhaps the title of this novel comes from a song, “The Long Black Veil”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyRgLcx_eYY

Note (added July 29): The song is cited on page 144 of the novel.

Character with three personalities in “Long Black Veil” by Jennifer Finney Boylan (post 5): Quentin has internal dialogue, then speaks as Judith

Quentin, man of many voices—a talent for imitating the voices of other people—has just proposed marriage to the woman who had been his girlfriend years ago. She rejects his proposal. After he drives away and is alone, he has this dialogue with an inner voice:

[VOICE] Well, what were you expecting? That she would drop everything after all these years and leap into your arms?

QUENTIN Yeah, something like that.

[VOICE] And you expected this reception because?

QUENTIN Because she loves me.

[VOICE] Quentin, my friend. She doesn’t have the slightest idea who you are. Anything she was ever in love with was only what you let her see.

QUENTIN And that makes me different from other humans how, exactly?

[VOICE] In every way. The souls that other women come to love bear some resemblance to the men those souls actually belong to. Unlike some people we could mention.

QUENTIN So this is the price of being in love? Having to share your darkest self with someone before they wrap their arms around you? I don’t think most men approach the question that way exactly. Or women, for that matter.

[VOICE] Okay. So what now then?

QUENTIN We’re not going back to Continental Bank, I can tell you that.

[VOICE] So where then? Twenty-nine seems kind of old to be starting your life over again from scratch.

QUENTIN Starting it over? I don’t think we ever had one in the first place.

[VOICE] And whose fault is that exactly?

QUENTIN I know what you want me to do. But I’m not doing that.

[VOICE] Because your plan is clearly working out so well. When’s the wedding again?

QUENTIN Just because I know what we have to do doesn’t mean that I can actually do it. I’ll die if I have to do it.

[VOICE] Hey, whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

QUENTIN Yeah, I know that people always say that. But what they never add is, whatever actually does kill you, kills you totally fucking dead (1, pp. 34-35).

At the end of the chapter, the outwardly male Quentin says that his true personality is the female Judith, who speaks for herself:

“I’d always liked the sound of the name Judith; it was the name I’d used in private since childhood, since my first recollection of being alive. I said it out loud…I wasn’t quite sure what was going to happen next” (1, p. 40).

1. Jennifer Finney Boylan. Long Black Veil. New York, Crown, 2017.

“My Year of Rest and Relaxation” by Ottessa Moshfegh (post 5): An alternate personality takes over by getting the host personality to hibernate

Near the end of the novel, as the protagonist is about to start the last and strictest phase of her “hibernation,” she acknowledges that “It was lunacy, this idea, that I could sleep myself into a new life. Preposterous” (1, p. 260). So what is all this talk about “hibernation”? Who, if anyone, was to go into hibernation?

The fact is, she is not trying to become a different person, per se. Although she has cleaned out her apartment of almost all her personal belongings, “I needed my birth certificate and my passport and my driver’s license. At the end of my hibernation, I’d wake up—I imagined—and see my past life as an inheritance. I’d need proof of the old identity to help me access my bank accounts, to go places. It wasn’t as if I’d wake up with a different face and body and name. I’d appear to be the old me…I was born into privilege…I was not going to squander that. I’m not a moron” (1, pp. 264-265).

So if she is not after sleep, per se, and she is not expecting to become a different person, per se, what kind of transformation is she after? The key is her drug of choice.

Having tried numerous medications, she now plans to take the only one, Infermiterol, that does what she really wants, which is not to simply hibernate, but to make her want to do things that had been out of character: “Infermiterol had made me do things out of my nature for days at a time without my knowledge” (1, p. 216).

Infermiterol (a fictitious medication) was her ideal drug, because it caused her to switch to one or more alternate personalities. And by taking it for an extended period of time, she hoped to achieve a permanent switch to an alternate personality.

Actually, it was only the host personality who was to go into hibernation. “Hibernation” using Infermiterol was the plot by her alternate personality to take over.

The first-person narrator is nameless, because the one telling the story is the alternate personality. She doesn’t want to lie to the reader by claiming to be the host personality, but like most alternate personalities, she prefers to remain incognito.

1. Ottessa Moshfegh. My Year of Rest and Relaxation. New York, Penguin Press, 2018.

“My Year of Rest and Relaxation” by Ottessa Moshfegh (post 4): She hopes sleep will cure possession and harassment by alternate personalities

“I’d wake up to find voice messages on my cell phone from salons or spas confirming appointments I’d booked in my sleep…An occasional package from Barneys or Saks provided me with men’s pajamas and other things I couldn’t remember ordering” (1, pp. 1-2).

While her host personality is asleep, alternate personalities are busy, but at least she (the host personality) does not hear their voices, as she often does when awake (see below).

“I can’t point to any one event that resulted in my decision to go into hibernation…I just wanted…to drown out my thoughts and judgments, since the constant barrage made it hard not to hate everyone and everything…” (1, pp. 17-18).

To say that her thoughts and judgments were a “constant barrage” implies she felt harassed by thoughts and judgments from alternate personalities.

“I was tall and thin and blond and pretty and young. Even at my worst, I knew I still looked good” (1, p. 27).

If the protagonist is blond, why is the cover art a portrait of a brunette? Is one of the alternate personalities a brunette?

“If I had a distinct thought, I would hear it…conversation with myself” (1, p. 39).

She was hearing the voices of alternate personalities and conversing with them.

1. Ottessa Moshfegh. My Year of Rest and Relaxation. New York, Penguin Press, 2018.

“Mary Page Marlowe” by Tracy Letts (post 3): Protagonist changes her name. Scenes not chronological. Quirks, gimmicks, or multiple personality?

Mary Page Switches to Mary

In Scene Five, the title character, now age thirty-six, is seeing her psychotherapist. This is not their first session. The therapy is well established. And until now, the therapist had been addressing her as “Mary Page,” apparently with her agreement.

Then, unexpectedly, when the therapist addresses her once again as “Mary Page,” she replies, “Mm, it’s just Mary now. No Page.” The therapist, who is very surprised, asks why she has changed her name, but the more the therapist tries to understand it, the more confusing and evasive her answers.

Shortly after the protagonist changes her name to “Mary,” the author inserts this stage direction: “(MARY shakes her head.)” Is the author certifying that it is now the alternate personality, Mary, speaking, and no longer the host personality, Mary Page? Or is he just humoring this character in her latest whim?

Why are the scenes not chronological?

Only if Mary Page Marlowe were a person with multiple personality might it make sense for the personalities to make their appearance in no particular order, since all of the personalities would exist simultaneously, and it would only be a matter of chance and circumstance as to which personality was out and in control at any given time. Otherwise, it makes no sense.

Concluding Comment

Multiple actresses for the same character; the protagonist suddenly claims a different name; lack of chronological sequence, are given no rationale, seem like theatrical gimmicks or arbitrary character quirks, but are consistent with multiple personality. And if the author did not intend to suggest multiple personality, it would be what I call “gratuitous multiple personality,” and could reflect the author’s multiple personality trait.

Tracy Letts. Mary Page Marlowe. Samuel French, 2017.

“Mary Page Marlowe” by Tracy Letts (post 2): Presented by Steppenwolf Theatre Company, named for Hesse’s “Steppenwolf,” about multiple personality

I am reading Letts’s play, in which the title character is played by six actresses at different ages. Since another character, Roberta Marlowe, appears in the play at ages nineteen and thirty-two, but is played by only one actress, it is clear that the six actresses playing Mary Page Marlowe are meant to dramatize different personalities, not just different ages.

Mary Page Marlowe was first presented by the Steppenwolf Theatre Company of Chicago in 2016. The theater company, founded in 1974, was named after the 1927 novel by Hermann Hesse.

However, when I google brief video interviews of the author and others associated with this play, none mentions the Hesse novel or its thesis, that many people have unrecognized multiple personality.

Search “Hesse” and “Steppenwolf.”

“The Woman in Cabin 10” by Ruth Ware (post 3): Protagonist reads “The Bell Jar” by Sylvia Plath, who also had both depression and multiple personality

At the end, the protagonist, Lo Blacklock, a writer, has survived a harrowing threat to her life, has reconciled with her boyfriend, and looks like she will live happily ever after, except for one thing:

One of the books Lo had brought with her to the cruise ship was The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. Ruth Ware highlights this fact by mentioning it three times (1, pp. 250, 261, 264), but its meaning is not explained.

Sylvia Plath was a writer who committed suicide.

Ruth Ware may have thought that the one and only connection between Lo and Plath was depression, since Plath had been traditionally diagnosed with depression, and Lo has taken antidepressant medication for many years.

But Plath, like Lo (see previous posts), probably had both depression and multiple personality. Indeed, Plath’s symptoms of multiple personality are known in much greater detail. Search “Plath” and “Bell Jar.”

One of Lo’s favorite books, Winnie-the-Pooh, includes the character Tigger (1, p. 287). I don’t think any literary allusion about multiple personality was intended, but, coincidentally, “Tigger” had been used as a name by one of Doris Lessing’s alternate personalities. Search “Lessing.”

1. Ruth Ware. The Woman in Cabin 10. New York, Scout Press, 2016.

“Parts” in “The Woman in Cabin 10” by Ruth Ware (post 2): Protagonist in mirror, not just one personality weighing factors, but three “parts” who differ

Many people with multiple personality don’t like the idea of having multiple personality. So they employ euphemisms. In English, the most common euphemism for an alternate personality is “part.” They won’t say they have alternate personalities, but they will say they have parts:

“Making myself up for dinner that night…

“Part of me, a big part, wanted to go and huddle beneath my duvet—the idea of making small talk with a group of people containing a potential murderer, eating food served by someone who might have killed a woman last night—that thought was terrifying…

“But another, more stubborn part refused to give in. As I applied mascara…I found myself searching in my reflection for the angry, idealistic girl…thinking of the dreams I’d had of becoming an investigative reporter…But how could I look that girl in the mirror in the eye, if I didn’t have the courage to get out there and investigate a story that was staring me in the face?…

“Besides, as I shut the bathroom door behind me and put on my evening shoes, a smaller, more selfish part of me was whispering that I was safest in company. No one could harm me in front of a room full of witnesses” (1, pp. 202-203).

In the above, the mirror is noteworthy. Persons with multiple personality may sometimes see alternate personalities when they look in the mirror. Search “mirror” and “mirrors” for past discussions.

1. Ruth Ware. The Woman in Cabin 10. New York, Scout Press, 2016.

“The Woman in Cabin 10” by Ruth Ware: In the beginning of mystery novel, author bolsters her protagonist’s credibility by having her hear voices

The first 44 pages of this mystery novel are about Lo Blacklock’s credibility. She is a thirty-two-year-old writer for a travel magazine, who is about to go on a luxury cruise as an important writing assignment. During the upcoming cruise, she will claim that the woman in cabin 10 has been thrown overboard, but others will claim that cabin 10 had been unoccupied.

Pre-cruise, Lo’s apartment is invaded by a masked burglar, a frightening experience which causes anxiety and insomnia. To cope, even before the burglary, she drinks too much. And when her boyfriend returns to town, and suddenly awakens her from the little sleep she has been able to get, she momentarily confuses him with the burglar and hits him in the face with a lamp.

Lo’s Voices

[After the burglar has slammed her bedroom door in her face] “I wanted to run back to bed, to shove my head under the pillows and cry and cry. But a small, ugly voice in my skull kept saying, He’s still out there. What if he comes back? What if he comes back for you?” (1, pp. 5-6).

“After he’d gone, I made myself a tea and paced the flat…[She felt a sense] of space invaded, a need to reclaim what had been violated. Violated? said a sarcastic little voice in my head. Puh-lease, you drama queen” (1, pp. 11-12).

“…I could see the splintered wood where he’d forced the lock. The miracle was that I hadn’t heard him. Well, what do you expect, you were drunk, after all, said the nasty little voice in my head” (1, p. 16).

“But unwanted images kept intruding…I opened my eyes, but for once the reality check didn’t help…You’re losing it again, my internal voice sniped. You can feel it, can’t you?” (1, pp. 16-17).

Her boyfriend was out of town, “But I had his spare keys in my coat pocket, and I couldn’t face the walk back to my flat. You could get a cab, carped the small, snide voice in the back of my head. It’s not the walk you can’t face. Coward” (1, pp. 23-24).

“Let me think about it,” I said at last, in a voice that didn’t seem to be mine…” (1, p. 28).

Comment

These voices are calm, clever, and rational. They are not intended to be read as pathological, auditory hallucinations, but as Lo’s steady side(s). They are healthy voices that bolster Lo’s credibility.

These voices may or may not be the same voice:

“a small, ugly voice”

“a sarcastic little voice”

“the nasty little voice”

“my internal voice”

“the small, snide voice”

“a voice that didn’t seem to be mine”

It is not clear whether these are different ways of referring to the same voice, or six different voices. But it is explicit that Lo hears voices.

In the sixth example above, the “voice” spoke for itself, either by imposing itself on the host personality from behind-the-scenes or by coming out and speaking for itself, but allowing the host personality to remain co-conscious.

Why would an author seek to bolster her protagonist’s credibility with voices? Because many fiction writers regard such voices as common and normal.

And as a feature of multiple personality trait (the normal version of multiple personality disorder), the rational voices of alternate personalities are normal.

(Search “voice” and “voices” for prior discussions.)

1. Ruth Ware. The Woman in Cabin 10. New York, Scout Press, 2016.

“The Liars’ Club” (post 4) by Mary Karr (post 8): Memoir’s previously blanked-out revelation was a memory gap, typical of multiple personality  

At the end of this memoir, Mother’s unspecified mental illness is supposedly explained by this revelation: Many marriages ago, Mother’s husband at that time had taken their two children, Tex and Belinda, and disappeared. And when Mother eventually found them, she did not avail herself of legal authority to regain custody, because she felt she could not provide a good home as a single parent.

Her many subsequent marriages reflected her hope of establishing a stable home, so that she could take her children back. But due to mental instability and bad luck, that never happened. And she had kept those children a secret from her later children, Mary Karr and sister.

But why did Mother’s first husband suddenly disappear with their two children? And why, when she found them, did she not ask that question? Had Mother already been mentally ill and dangerous? Indeed, was her mental illness the cause, not the effect, of the abandonment? And was her mental illness of a kind in which she usually looked normal, especially in public, leading her husband to fear that he could never convince a judge otherwise?

Her history of having many subsequent marriages has diagnostic significance in distinguishing between a psychosis like schizophrenia and a dissociative neurosis like multiple personality disorder. It is only the latter in which the person would be sufficiently socially engaging to have all those relationships.

Memory Gap

As discussed in past posts, Karr explicitly says that she has a tendency to blank things out from her memory (i.e., have memory gaps, a cardinal symptom of multiple personality). The matter of her mother’s first two children is another example: Karr had been told about those two half-siblings when she was seven, many years before the end-of-memoir revelation, when she was twenty-five. But she had blanked out the memory, which she, herself, found hard to explain:

“…two extra kids who’d appeared from a pocket in Grandma’s apron were unfathomable. This doesn’t completely explain my blanking out Tex and Belinda, though, because usually you could convince me of anything” (1, p. 80).

“The Liars’ Club” Title

The regular gathering of her father and his friends to trade tall tales, which Karr calls “The Liars’ Club,” is not a big enough event in this memoir to explain why she made it the title.

Perhaps she thinks that writers of memoirs belong to a liars’ club. After all, how can they know the whole truth about themselves if they blank things out?

1. Mary Karr. The Liars’ Club (A Memoir). New York, Viking, 1995.

“The Liars’ Club” (post 3) by Mary Karr (post 7): Child is more vulnerable due to alternate personalities developed in response to previous trauma

Multiple personality is a psychological defense that begins in childhood as a way to cope with traumatic experiences. Alternate personalities may enable a child to wall off and segregate overwhelming feelings, and, through compliance, avoid being killed by a much stronger perpetrator.

The downside of this defense is that those kinds of alternate personalities may make the person easier to victimize in subsequent assaults.

In the following quotes from The Liars’ Club, I have put relevant parts in bold face. They appear to refer to the feeling, of being marked as a certain type of person, coming from; the voice coming from; and the tears coming from, one or more alternate personalities that the person senses inside her.

“I get sick one day and the grown man who allegedly comes to care for me winds up putting his dick in my eight-year-old mouth…I’ve stayed home from school, really sick with a fever…I’m…in my room reading Charlotte’s Web for the hundredth time…[She is so excited to tell about the story, like she would have told her father, that] I shout downstairs through the open door for my sitter to come up a minute and get a load of this…I remember so much that I think Daddy would be proud of my telling. My sitter nods all slow and serious. At the end, he says how being special friends with somebody keeps you from ever being lonesome. And do I want to be his special friend?” (1, pp. 239-241).

Various things go through her mind as the baby-sitter exposes himself and coerces her; including, “I think of that old neighbor boy laying me down…him on top of me bucking. Probably I don’t even have a cherry form that. I didn’t hear it pop inside me…Whether I have a cherry or not, though, I can feel how marked I am inside for being hurt that way…” (1, p. 243).

As the baby-sitter’s penis approaches, “Somehow a small voice rises up from my belly and asks that dick all whispery not to hurt me” (1, p. 244).

“Then for no reason, his hands clap down on the back of my head. All care and gentleness go out of him. I sense that even the voice has gone out of him. Which puzzles me, for I’m doing the best I can here. I haven’t even cried boo-hoo crying, though tears are streaming down my face. But I’m not making any noise or sobbing, or calling out, so these tears seem like somebody else’s, the tears of a different girl…(1, pp. 245-246).

1. Mary Karr. The Liars’ Club (A Memoir). New York, Viking, 1995.

“The Liars’ Club” (A Memoir) (post 2) by Mary Karr (post 6): Narrator with split personality compares mother to movie character with multiple personality

I’m two-thirds through this engrossing 320-page memoir. So far, it is retrospective to when the author was about eight years old. The child abuse mentioned at the beginning has not been discussed further. Her declared tendency to have memory gaps has continued, but is mentioned only now and then, in passing; for example, when she sleepwalked or blanked out:

“It was sometime in August that I started walking in my sleep. Actually I did things other than just walk: I’d go squat behind the living room drapes and go to the bathroom in a pile they sometimes didn’t find till the next morning…” (1, p. 61).

“Apparently I just blanked out her last visit along with a lot of other things. She [her grandmother] died, and I wasn’t sorry” (1, p. 99).

In Karr’s book on writing memoirs, previously discussed, she emphasizes the great importance of finding the right narrative “voice.” However, The Liars’ Club does not seem to have a single voice, but at least three, one adult and two child-aged.

It’s first words, “My sharpest memory” would seem to mean that the memoir will be from the perspective of the adult, looking back, but most of the rest, so far, has been from her perspective as a child.

And her personality as a child seems to be split into at least two parts: a girl who is sensitive, loving, and vulnerable and one who is insensitive (toward her grandmother), tough and violent (she had once assaulted a fellow 5-year-old, although she didn’t remember doing so, and she later takes revenge on another child by shooting him with a BB gun).

A puzzling inconsistency in personality, especially when it occurs in a person with memory gaps, raises the possibility of multiple personality.

Her Mother

I previously noted her mother’s eye-rolling and aspirin-taking as conceivably related to multiple personality. As the memoir continues, Karr mentions that her mother’s accent changes from it’s usual one (they live in Texas) to one from the North:

“Then she took on that Yankee accent” (1, p. 128).

“We [Karr and her sister] have left our room a mess, she says in a hoarse voice I don’t think of as hers. But that’s the only voice she has left, her drunk Yankee one” (1, p. 149).

Is this change in speaking voice—which “I don’t think of as hers”—only because her mother may have once lived in New York and now speaks this way when she is drunk? Or is this an example of how, in multiple personality, different personalities may have different ways of speaking, and her Yankee accent is the way that her drinking alternate personality speaks?

On the previous page, Karr cites a movie: “Mother’s back to me in that rocker conjured that old Alfred Hitchcock movie Psycho she’d taken us to in 1960” (1, p. 148). In that movie, the mother in the rocker turned out to be the alternate personality of a male character. But since Karr does not specifically mention this about the movie, and only refers, nonspecifically, to its craziness, it appears she did not realize that she was comparing her mother to a depiction of multiple personality disorder, per se.

1. Mary Karr. The Liars’ Club (A Memoir). New York, Viking, 1995.

“Hillary’s Choice” by Gail Sheehy: Mental health professional working close to White House said Bill Clinton (post 6) had multiple personality

Hillary’s Choice is a biography of Hillary Clinton and her marriage. I have not read all of it, since I was interested only in Bill Clinton and multiple personality. The index, under “Clinton, Bill,” lists “dissociative identities of, 301,” to which I turned, and from which I quote:

“The most convincing analysis of Clinton’s sickness was offered to me by a highly qualified mental health professional who works too close to the White House to be identified. This source sees evidence that the President may suffer from dissociative identities…

“The new official definition of this dissociative disorder (which used to be called ‘multiple personalities’) describes a personality that is a sum of various identities that have been split off at some time in the past. The split is usually due to traumatic events.

“ ‘He was so young, barely four,’ Hillary explained in an interview, ‘when he was scarred by abuse that he can’t even take it out and look at it. There was terrible conflict between his mother and grandmother’ ” (1, p. 301).

This speculation by Sheehy and her unnamed mental health professional goes on for most of the page. I do not know if the latter had any expertise with multiple personality (most mental health professionals do not). There is no claim that Bill Clinton was personally evaluated. My purpose here is simply to show that Clinton’s possible multiple personality was a matter of published speculation during his presidency.

Since no politician would have considered it a favor to be labelled as mentally ill—at that time, there was no concept of multiple personality trait, a normal version—the above speculation would not have been welcome.

Moreover, if he did commit any abusive and unlawful acts (I don’t know whether he did or not) as a result of multiple personality, then it couldn’t, at that time, have been considered a normal version.

Nevertheless, whether he had multiple personality trait or multiple personality disorder (assuming he had either), it was compatible with functioning as President.

1. Gail Sheehy. Hillary’s Choice. New York, Random House, 1999.

“The President is Missing” (post 3) by Bill Clinton (post 5) and James Patterson (post 8): How can you know it is an alternate personality?

In yesterday’s post, I failed to highlight a very important point about multiple personality. When the President’s Chief of Staff switched to an alternate personality, the President recognized that he was seeing a side of her that he had never seen before, but he did not realize it was an alternate personality, per se.

He did not realize it, because the alternate personality, who may firmly believe she is a different person with a different name, and is not the same Chief of Staff that the President thinks she is, does not declare or acknowledge that belief. She does not say, “I’m not Carrie, you fool. I’m so and so. Carrie is a fool for always being loyal to you, but I’m not.” So how could the President ever realize what was going on?

As I’ve said in many past posts, alternate personalities typically prefer to remain incognito. They typically answer to the person’s regular name, so you don’t know it is them. They often think they look quite different from the regular self, and they think people are stupid for not noticing, but they will not announce who they are, because they don’t want people to recognize who they are and interfere with their comings and goings.

So how do you ever know that the person has multiple personality? The most common key is to ask the regular personality about memory gaps.

If later, when the Chief of Staff has reverted to her regular demeanor, the President were to ask her if anything unusual had happened during such and such a period of time, he might be surprised to find that she (her regular, host personality) had no memory of anything unusual.

But then, if the President were to press the issues that came up when she had acted out-of-character, he would precipitate a switch back to the alternate personality. But now, he would recognize what was going on. And the alternate personality, who realizes that her cover had been blown, would acknowledge who she really is (in her view), and be able to give additional information that could be verified.

But then, if the President addressed her by her regular name, she would switch back to the host personality and have no memory for what the alternate personality had told him. Indeed, if he were now to tell her what had happened, and say she has multiple personality, she would probably say he is making it up, since she does not remember it, and she feels it is too far-fetched.

I have seen this happen, clinically.

“The Liars’ Club” (A Memoir) (Chapter 1) by Mary Karr (post 5): Both vivid memory and memory gaps, a common combination in multiple personality 

Memory in Multiple Personality

It is common for persons with multiple personality to have excellent, vivid powers of memory, but also peculiar lapses in memory: amnesia, memory gaps, absent-mindedness, dissociative fugue.

Vivid Memory

“My father comes into focus for me on a Liars’ Club afternoon [when he and his friends would tell each other tall tales]. He sits at a wobbly card table weighed down by a bottle. Even now the scene seems so real to me that I can’t but write it in the present tense” (1, p. 15).

Memory Gaps

“When the truth would be unbearable the mind often just blanks it out…Neighborhood myth has it that I once coldcocked a five-year-old playmate with an army trench shovel, then calmly went back to digging. Some of this explosiveness just came from a naturally bad temperament, of course. But some stems from that night, when my mind simply erased everything up until Dr. Boudreaux began inviting me to show him marks that I now know weren’t even there” (1, p. 9-10).

In Chapter 1, she highlights childhood sexual abuse and memory gaps, but does not mention any specific condition (e.g., multiple personality) for which these might be cause and symptom.

Her Mother

“Pressing Mother for details of her past always led to eye-rolling and aspirin-taking…” (1, p. 12).

The eye-roll (rolling the eyes up) is traditionally related to trance and hypnotizability. Persons who develop multiple personality are often high in hypnotizability. An old theory of multiple personality is that it involves self-hypnosis.

The most common physical symptom of persons with multiple personality is headache (prompting a person to take aspirin), which may occur when alternate personalities fight each other for control.

So the mother’s eye-rolling and aspirin-taking might mean that asking her for details of her past precipitated a conflict for control among alternate personalities.

1. Mary Karr. The Liars’ Club (A Memoir). New York, Viking, 1995.

“The President is Missing” (post 2) by Bill Clinton (post 4) and James Patterson (post 7): White House traitor has gratuitous multiple personality

This patriarchal thriller has one preachy hero (the President) and three victimized bitches (assassin, Vice President, Chief of Staff).

In the whole novel, there are only two, very brief, psychologically revealing passages: 1. the assassin’s changeable sense of identity is described, and 2. the Chief of Staff switches from one personality to another.

The first passage, from the beginning of the novel, was quoted in the previous post. The second passage, from the end of the novel, is when the President (first-person narrator) confronts his Chief of Staff, and she switches to her traitorous, alternate personality:

“ ‘How could you do this, Carrie?’ ”

“ ‘Says the man who gets to be president.’ ”

“The words come from a voice I don’t recognize, a voice I’ve never heard, a part of Carolyn that has managed to elude me during our years together. Her head rises from her hands, and she looks at me squarely, her face twisted up in agony and bitterness in a way I’ve never seen before. ‘Says the man who didn’t see his political career tanked just for saying a dirty word on a live mike ’ ” (1, p. 474).

The above is a classic description of a woman who switches from one personality to another: She briefly hides her face in her hands during the actual moment of switching, then her alternate personality speaks, with its different voice, different attitude, and different facial expression. The President, who has never seen this personality before, finds the encounter eerie.

Since the novel’s two brief passages that suggest multiple personality are neither intentional character development (the author did not intend to portray these characters as having multiple personality) nor necessary to the plot, they are examples of gratuitous multiple personality. They are in the novel only because they reflect the author’s own psychology. (Search “gratuitous” for examples in other novels.)

1. Bill Clinton and James Patterson. The President is Missing. London, Century, 2018.

“Mary Page Marlowe” by Tracy Letts (Pulitzer Prize playwright): Mary is played by six actresses, but author, reviewer, interviewer fail to recognize multiple personality

Tracy Letts is a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and Tony Award-winning actor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracy_Letts

One of his plays, “Mary Page Marlowe,” is reviewed in today’s New York Times. The print edition is titled, “Many Marys Make One Woman.”

“Mr. Letts…divides her life into 11 scenes that don’t quite align, like a jigsaw puzzle contaminated with foreign pieces. The Mary Pages we meet in these scenes are often strangers to one another, played from infancy to the age of 69 by six different actresses and a doll…

“The 36-year-old Mary Page, during an appointment with her shrink…describes her personality as a series of ‘compartments’ and considers ways to integrate her ‘different lives.’ We’ve seen those different lives in action and understand how her refusal to acknowledge them creates the moral fog she prefers to live in…she quickly disowns her therapeutic insights…” https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/12/theater/review-mary-page-marlowe-tracy-letts-tatiana-maslany.html

In a television interview, the playwright acknowledges that his play is about identity and that it may say something about himself, but he does not seem to realize that having more than one actress play a character is a metaphor for multiple personality: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNING97sp2c

The playwright, reviewer, and interviewer seem to think that the different Marys are merely representative of different ages. But alternate personalities in multiple personality are often of different ages.

Although most people are different at different ages, only persons with multiple personality would think of themselves as being virtually different people at different ages.

Moreover, the character, herself, has the insight that her personality has different “compartments,” which is a euphemism for multiple personality. But after having that insight, she then rejects that insight, as people with multiple personality often do.