“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.