New York Times book review says Myers-Briggs personality test was based on ideas of Dr. Carl Jung, but fails to mention Jung had multiple personality

The New York Times book review of The Personality Brokers (1), which is about the creation of the Myers-Briggs personality test, agrees with Wikipedia that the test (2) was based on ideas of Swiss psychiatrist Dr. Carl Jung (3). 

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/29/books/review-personality-brokers-myers-briggs-merve-emre.html

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indicator

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Jung

However, neither The New York Times nor Wikipedia mentions that Dr. Carl Jung had multiple personality. He described it in his autobiography, which I discussed as follows:

December 6, 2015

C. G. Jung’s Memories, Dreams, Reflections: A psychiatrist who had multiple personality and who built a psychological theory partially based on it.

Carl Gustave Jung (1875 -1961) is of interest here for three reasons:

First, Jungian therapists have a tradition of treating creative artists.

Second, Jung described himself as having a normal version of multiple personality, and some of his psychological theory is based on his own psychology.

Third, I like to give examples of successful people, and not just novelists, who have had multiple personality.

In his autobiography, Jung explicitly describes himself as having more than one personality since childhood:

“Then, to my intense confusion, it occurred to me that I was actually two different persons. One of them was the schoolboy who could not grasp algebra and was far from sure of himself, the other was important, a high authority, a man not to be trifled with…This ‘other’ was an old man who lived in the eighteenth century…I began pondering these isolated impressions, and they coalesced into a coherent picture: of myself living in two ages simultaneously, and being two different persons” (1, pp. 33-35).

Since he continues to function well, he infers that he does not have a medical illness, multiple personality disorder, but rather a normal psychological phenomenon. He is right, except when he assumes that everyone has normal multiple personality (most people don’t):

“The play and counterplay between personalities No. 1 and No. 2, which has run through my whole life, has nothing to do with a ‘split’ or dissociation in the ordinary medical sense. On the contrary, it is played out in every individual. In my life No. 2 has been of prime importance, and I have always tried to make room for anything that wanted to come from within. He is a typical figure, but he is perceived only by the very few” (1, p. 45).

It is true that many people with multiple personality don’t realize it, but it is going too far to say that everyone has it (most people don’t).

“…I once asked myself, ‘What am I really doing? Certainly this has nothing to do with science. But then what is it?’ Whereupon a voice within me said, ‘It is art.’ I was astonished. It had never entered my head that what I was writing has any connection with art. Then I thought, ‘Perhaps my unconscious is forming a personality that is not me, but which is insisting on coming through to expression…I said very emphatically to this voice that my fantasies had nothing to do with art, and I felt a great inner resistance…Then came the…same assertion: 'That is art.’ This time I caught her and said, ‘No, it is not art!'…and prepared myself for an argument…She came through with a long statement…Later…I called her the ‘anima’…I felt a little awed by her. It was like the feeling of an invisible presence in the room…” (1, pp. 185-186).

1. C. G. Jung. Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Recorded and Edited by Aniela Jaffé. Translated by Richard and Clara Winston. Revised Edition. New York, Vintage Books/Random House, 1961/1973.

Neil Simon, playwright: “I’ve always felt like a middleman, like the typist. Somebody else is saying what they say, very often the characters themselves”

Neil Simon is another great writer who either tells the same old joke that many other writers tell or else acknowledges that he, too, uses multiple personality in his writing process:

“I can’t recollect a moment when I’ve said, This would make a good play…What I might do is make a few notes on who’s in the play, the characters I want, where it takes place, and the general idea of it. I don’t make any outlines at all. I just like to plunge in. I’ll start right from page one because I want to hear how the people speak…I really don’t know what the theme of the play is until I’ve written it and the critics tell me…

“I’ve always felt like a middleman, like the typist. Somebody somewhere else is saying, This is what they say now. This is what they say next. Very often it is the characters themselves, once they become clearly defined. When I was working on my first play…I was told…you must outline your play, you must know where you are going…In the writing of the play, I didn’t get past page fifteen when the characters started to move away from the outline. I tried to pull them back in, saying, Get back in there. This is where you belong. I’ve already diagrammed your life. They said, No, no, no. This is where I want to go. So, I started following them…” (1).

Neil Simon tells the interviewer that the characters are “very often” (but not always) the ones who tell him what comes next. Interviewers should ask who else is involved—a narrator? a muse?—but they rarely do.

1. Neil Simon, interviewed by James Lipton. “The Art of Theater No. 10,” in The Paris Review, Issue 125, Winter 1992. https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/1994/neil-simon-the-art-of-theater-no-10-neil-simon

“The Accidental Tourist” by Anne Tyler (post 3): “He began to think that who you are when you’re with somebody may matter more than whether you love her”

Toward the end of the novel, Macon reflects on the fact (see previous post) that when he lives with Muriel, his personality is fundamentally different than when he lives with Sarah (his wife of many years):

“He began to think that who you are when you’re with somebody may matter more than whether you love her” (1, p. 307).

Notice: He does not speak of how a person feels when with one person or another, but who a person is when with one person or another.

Everyone feels different in different circumstances and with different people. But it is the person with multiple personality who switches among different senses of personal identity.

Thus, the author has raised the issue of multiple personality without acknowledging it and apparently without intending to do so. Why? It may reflect her own psychology.

1. Anne Tyler. The Accidental Tourist [1985]. New York, Berkley Books, 1986.

“The Accidental Tourist” by Anne Tyler (post 2): Macon’s methodical, emotionally distant behavior stops when he switches to an alternate personality

The first 201 pages of this 342-page novel are a running joke about Macon Leary’s personality. He earns his living by writing travel guidebooks that help businessmen who visit foreign countries feel like they haven’t left home. When he is at home, he is extremely set in his ways and methodical. His personal relationships are limited and constrained. His wife has just left him, because she can no longer tolerate his personality, which has been the same for the many years that she has known him.

“Oh, above all else he was an orderly man. He was happiest with a regular scheme of things. He tended to eat the same meals over and over and to wear the same clothes; to drop off his cleaning on a certain set day and to pay his bills on another. The teller who helped him on his first trip to a bank was the teller he went to forever after, even if she proved not to be efficient, even if the next teller’s line was shorter. There was no room in his life for anyone as unpredictable as Muriel” (1, p. 201).

Muriel, the other main character, is the young, divorced woman who is training Macon’s dog, and is struggling to support herself and her son.

Surprisingly, “In the foreign country that was Singleton Street [where Muriel lived] he was an entirely different person. This person had never been suspected of narrowness, never been accused of chilliness; in fact, was mocked for his soft heart. And was anything but orderly” (1, p. 202-203).

Comment

Persons with multiple personality are often called “multiples,” as distinguished from persons who have only one personality, who are called “singletons.” Was Anne Tyler implying that Macon is a multiple and Muriel is a singleton, since she lives on Singleton Street?

In any case, what is described above is Macon’s switch to an alternate personality. It illustrates this principle: the particular personality that is able to come out and take control depends upon which personality best fits the circumstances.

Macon’s previous obsession with maintaining a methodical and emotionally distant lifestyle was a particular personality’s effort to maintain circumstances conducive to its remaining in control. But Muriel changed the circumstances, and so an alternate personality, who had been stuck inside, but was better suited to the new circumstances, came out and took over.

1. Anne Tyler. The Accidental Tourist [1985]. New York, Berkley Books, 1986.

"Separating Fact from Fiction: An Empirical Examination of Six Myths About Dissociative Identity Disorder" (Multiple Personality Disorder)

Bethany L. Brand, PhD, Vedat Sar, MD, Pam Stavropoulos, PhD, Crista Krüger, MB BCh, MMed (Psych), MD, Marilyn Korzekwa, MD, Alfonso Martínez-Taboas, PhD, and Warwick Middleton, MB BS, FRANZCP, MD

"This article examines the empirical literature pertaining to recurrently expressed beliefs regarding Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID): (1) belief that DID is a fad, (2) belief that DID is primarily diagnosed in North America by DID experts who overdiagnose the disorder, (3) belief that DID is rare, (4) belief that DID is an iatrogenic, rather than trauma-based, disorder, (5) belief that DID is the same entity as borderline personality disorder, and (6) belief that DID treatment is harmful to patients. The absence of research to substantiate these beliefs, as well as the existence of a body of research that refutes them, confirms their mythical status."

Harv Rev Psychiatry. 2016 Jul; 24(4): 257–270.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4959824/

“The Accidental Tourist” by Anne Tyler: Macon writes guidebooks for traveling businessmen, and Muriel trains dogs to have split personality

In the first third of this novel, Macon, the title character, is introduced as a writer of guidebooks that are designed to help traveling businessmen avoid anything that is disturbingly unfamiliar. Muriel is a young women who trains dogs that, like Macon’s, have behavior problems. Macon is separated from his wife. Muriel is divorced. Macon’s son had been a random victim in a mass killing. Muriel’s son has troubles that she has not yet disclosed. In short, both Macon and Muriel fight chaos.

Thus far, apart from the history of trauma, the only possible connections to multiple personality are passing references to Macon’s divided sense of self, and Muriel’s concept of guard dog training as the teaching of multiple personality.

Macon’s Dissociative Identity

“In some odd way, he was locked inside the standoffish self he’d assumed when he and she [his separated wife] first met” (1, p. 51).

Macon appears to be distinguishing between two personalities, a standoffish one that has usually been in control since he first met his wife, and another self, now talking, who has usually been locked inside.

“Macon [who had broken his leg]…almost wondered whether, by some devious, subconscious means, he had engineered this injury…” (1, p. 62).

If a self existed outside of the regular self’s awareness, and it had its own intentions, and it could alter behavior accordingly, it would be an alternate personality.

Muriel teaches “split personality”

“I can do anything,” Muriel told him…“I can even teach split personality.”

“What’s split personality?” [Macon asks.]

“Where your dog is, like, nice to you but kills all others” (1, pp. 92-93).

1. Anne Tyler. The Accidental Tourist [1985]. New York, Berkley Books, 1986.

New York Times on “The Family Tabor” by Cherise Wolas (post 6) does not suspect multiple personality as cause of protagonist’s 30-year memory gap

The review says: “For 30 years, he has blocked from his memory the fact that he made his fortune on Wall Street by committing insider trading and fraud, and managed to send his friend, the innocent Max Stern, to prison in his stead…Harry has forgotten for 30 years how he made his fortune…More intriguing is the back-and-forth Harry has with himself over the morality of what he has done” (1).

Ordinarily, in reading such a review, I would not take it literally. I would assume it meant that although the character did remember his crime all those years, he had simply not liked to think about it.

However, I have read Cherise Wolas’s previous novel, The Resurrection of Joan Ashby, and wrote five posts on it in May 2018 (either scroll down or search “Wolas”). And that novel was about a woman with a split personality.

So, not having read Wolas’s new novel, I don’t know whether the protagonist literally had the kind of  memory gap that could not be accounted for by ordinary forgetting, and which might imply multiple personality. And I don’t know whether “the back-and-forth Harry has with himself” is between his two personalities. But I wonder.

1. Alex Kuczynski. “It’s All Relative,” in New York Times Book Review, Sunday, August 19, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/15/books/review/family-tabor-cherise-wolas-long-island-story-rick-gekoski.html

“The English Patient” by Michael Ondaatje (post 4): Climactic event at end of novel reveals that author had racial, not psychological, agenda.

I had wondered why so many pages were being devoted to the bomb deactivation activities of one of the main characters, Kirpal (Kip) Singh, an Indian Sikh in the British army.

The reason is revealed by the climactic event at the end of the novel: news that atomic bombs had been dropped on Japan. A narrator says that whites had used such a horrendous weapon only because the victims were “brown.”

Thus, the main theme of this novel is that the brown character, Kip, who deactivates bombs, is a symbol of good, while the white characters (at least the white male characters) are crooks, spies, and nuclear bombers.

The narrator is not so negative about white women, not only because they don’t drop nuclear bombs on brown people, but because he does not know them well enough. As he says about Hana, the white nurse, in his end-of-novel reflections about what happens in the future to the main characters, “She is a woman I don’t know well enough to hold in my wing, if writers have wings, to harbour for the rest of my life” (1, p. 320).

In short, this novel is essentially a racial parable about the good browns and the bad whites, and it is only incidentally interested in the psychology of these particular characters. Which is why nothing further is said about the English patient’s multiple personality (see previous post), the ignoring of which for the rest of the novel is one reason that readers and reviewers, by the end of the novel, usually don’t remember that the issue ever came up.

How can a novel depict multiple personality if the author did not intend to do it or even recognize that he had done it? Authors hold the mirror up to their own psychology.

1. Michael Ondaatje. The English Patient. London, Bloomsbury, 1992.

Unacknowledged Multiple Personality in “The English Patient” by Michael Ondaatje (post 3): Another character thinks: “Who is he speaking as now?”

I hope I’m not jumping to conclusions, since I still have about sixty pages to read in this 321-page novel, but I am surprised to find what appears to be a blatant revelation that the English patient has multiple personality:

Another character notes that the English patient sometimes speaks in the first person from Mr. Almásy’s point of view, but other times speaks in the third person as though Mr. Almásy were someone else.

Mr. Caravaggio, listening to the English patient, thinks: “Who is he speaking as now?” (1, p. 259).

Caravaggio “is still amazed at the clarity of discipline in the man, who speaks sometimes in the first person, sometimes in the third person, who still does not admit that he is Almásy.”

‘Who was talking, back then?” [Caravaggio asks Almásy, the so-called English patient].

‘ “Death means you are in the third person.” ’ [Almásy replies, cryptically] (1, pp. 262-263).

Why do most readers fail to see the above as depicting multiple personality? First, no narrator or character explicitly calls it “multiple personality.” Second, spurious alternate interpretations are provided: either that Almásy is speaking metaphorically as Death (since the extent of his severe burns will probably be fatal) or that he is in a delirious or delusional state caused by his burns and morphine.

Ultimately, the reason that most readers do not interpret The English Patient as depicting multiple personality, per se, is that the author probably did not think of it as depicting multiple personality.

1. Michael Ondaatje. The English Patient. London, Bloomsbury, 1992.

“The English Patient” by Michael Ondaatje: End of chapter one, Nameless Nurse “has removed all mirrors and stacked them away in an empty room”

Thus, namelessness is not the only recurrent issue of this blog that is touched on in chapter one. Mirrors are mentioned as noted above.

Mirrors are an issue in this blog, because some people with multiple personality may see an alternate personality when look in the mirror. And if that upsets them, they may avoid mirrors.

The presence of both namelessness and mirrors in chapter one might foreshadow something more definite relating to multiple personality, or, it could be a meaningless coincidence.

“The English Patient” by Michael Ondaatje: In chapter one, Ondaatje is comfortable with having both characters nameless, at least temporarily

I have just started this novel, which I chose because it is so celebrated (2018 Golden Man Booker). The only thing I had read that might have made it relevant to multiple personality was that the title character is misidentified as English because he has amnesia (memory gaps are a cardinal symptom of multiple personality).

However, the 25-page first chapter would appear to show that if the so-called English patient has claimed amnesia, he has lied. Flashbacks to when he had been in a plane crash, was severely burned, and had been cared for by Bedouins, indicate that the Bedouins had valued him for his knowledge and memory about weapons (the story takes place toward the end of WWII) and that his autobiographical memory had been intact.

The nurse who is now caring for him does appear to be having a nervous breakdown of some sort, and it is certainly possible that it will turn out to be a dissociative disorder (the diagnostic category of multiple personality). But so far, all I can say is that she seems to have that nonspecific condition which I call “literary madness.”

The only other thing in this first chapter that might suggest multiple personality is that both patient and nurse are nameless. Namelessness is a recurring subject in this blog, because multiple personality often includes nameless alternate personalities. And even though, as I gather, these two characters will be getting names, the question arises as to why the author is comfortable with having them nameless even for a while. Is that the way the characters initially came to him? (I am not inclined to accept literary technique as a sufficient explanation.)

But if that turns out to be all there is to suggest multiple personality, I am grasping at straws.

1. Michael Ondaatje. The English Patient. London, Bloomsbury, 1992.

V. S. Naipaul dies at 85: In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, he acknowledged having two personalities, but was he aware of more?

Most novelists that have admitted having multiple personality do not call it “multiple personality,” and only acknowledge having two personalities, the one who does the writing and the one for regular life.

Naipaul did this in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, in which he quotes Proust, and in a 1994 interview, both of which I quoted in a past post:

December 6, 2016

V. S. Naipaul’s Nobel Prize speech says his books were written, not by “the self that frequents the world,” but by an “innermost self,” an alternate personality.

Naipaul quotes Proust, who said, “…that a book is the product of a different self from the self we manifest in our habits, in our social life…In fact, it is the secretions of one’s innermost self, written in solitude and for oneself alone that one gives to the public. What one bestows on private life…is the product of a quite superficial self, not the innermost self which one can only recover by putting aside the world and the self that frequents the world” (1).

Naipaul had made a similar distinction in a 1994 interview. The interviewer reports: “That is how he talks, as if he were observing from afar the creature who bears his name. He says, ‘one’ instead of ‘I’ he refers to himself as ‘the writer’ and sometimes as ‘the man.’ [Naipaul] says ‘I do it instinctively, distinguishing between them, between writer and man’ ” (2).

1. V. S. Naipaul - Nobel Lecture (2001).

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2001/naipaul-lecture-e.html  
http://www.nobelprize.org/mediaplayer/index.php?id=899

2. Feroza Jussawalla (Editor). Conversations with V. S. Naipaul. Jackson, University Press of Mississippi, 1997, p. 139.

Are most novelists only aware of having two personalities, or are they aware of more, but two is the most that they are willing to publicly acknowledge?

In Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson famously hinted that there are more than two personalities, but that he will leave it to others, in the future, to write about them:

“I say two, because the state of my own knowledge does not pass beyond that point. Others will follow, others will outstrip me on the same lines; and I hazard the guess that man will be ultimately known for a mere polity of multifarious, incongruous and independent denizens” (1, p. 48).

1. Robert Louis Stevenson. Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde [1886]. New York, W. W. Norton, 2003.

“Pretty Girls” by Karin Slaughter: “It was almost like Claire was two different people,” one who loved her husband and one who knew he was a monster

The cover of this violent thriller by bestselling author Karin Slaughter has laudatory blurbs by Lee Child and Gillian Flynn, both of whom I have previously discussed. And like the characters of Child and Flynn, suggestions of multiple personality in Slaughter’s characters are unacknowledged, and may be present only because they reflect the author’s own psychology.

Claire, the main character, is the youngest of three sisters, just like the author is in real life, a similarity highlighted by Karin Slaughter, herself, in several published interviews.

Claire’s “inhospitable womb”

Early in the novel, when Claire was in love with her husband (whom she understood to have been an orphaned, only child):

“Her husband had made it clear that he wanted a big family. He wanted lots and lots of kids to inoculate him against loss, and Claire had tried and tried with him until finally she had agreed to go see a fertility expert who had informed Claire that she couldn’t have children because she had an IUD and was taking birth control pills. Of course Claire hadn’t shared that information with Paul. She had told her husband that the doctor had diagnosed her with something called ‘an inhospitable womb’ ” (1, pp. 45-46).

Had Claire been trying to deceive her husband? At this early point in the novel, the text does not give her a reason. Moreover, if Claire had known that she had an IUD and was taking birth control pills, why did she go to the fertility expert, and why didn’t her husband find out the truth, since he is portrayed as extremely attentive and intrusive to the details of her life?

If the reader stops to think about it, this is a very puzzling incident, which raises the question of whether Claire had one personality who wanted to get pregnant, but another personality who did not. And if her husband did not find out what she was doing to prevent pregnancy, it might be testimony to the extreme secretiveness of alternate personalities.

A hundred pages later, Claire’s sister has a similar hypothesis: “Lydia wondered if her sister knew how light her voice sounded when she talked about her life with Paul. It was almost like Claire was two different people—the woman who loved and believed in her husband and the woman who knew he was a monster” (1, p. 147).

Claire Compartmentalized

Back when Claire was in college, “She was remarkably adept at compartmentalizing everyone in her life. Her townie friends never met her college friends. Her cheerleading friends never mixed with her track club friends, and hardly anyone knew she was on the tennis team. None of them would’ve ever guessed she was sleeping around. Especially whichever man she was dating at the time” (1, p. 149).

Undiagnosed multiple personality may be described as compartmentalization.

Claire’s Mysterious Emotions

In multiple personality, the regular personality may sometimes be puzzled when it acts on, or experiences, the emotions—e.g., anger or sadness—from one of its alternate personalities.

“Lydia asked [her sister Claire], ‘What did you say?’

“ ‘I didn’t say anything at first. I was too angry. But I didn’t know I was angry, you know?’

“Lydia shook her head, because she always knew when she was angry” (1, p. 138).

“Claire’s cheeks were wet. She was crying. Why was she crying?…She touched her fingers to her face. The tears were real. How could that be?…She was still crying. This was crazy. She wasn’t in mourning. Why was she crying?” (1, pp. 302-304).

Concluding Comment

In several published interviews about Pretty Girls, Karin Slaughter highlights the fact that she is the youngest of three sisters, just like Claire, her main character. This would not imply that what happens to the character, or what the character does, has happened to, or has been done by, the author, but it would suggest psychological similarities.

In short, Pretty Girls has unacknowledged indications of multiple personality, a condition which is not required by the plot, but gives the novel psychological depth, and may reflect a trait of the author.

1. Karin Slaughter. Pretty Girls. New York, William Morrow/HarperCollins, 2015.

“August: Osage County” by Tracy Letts (post 4): Pulitzer Prize play gets mixed reviews because its characters do not have multiple personality

This play (1) won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and it is very dramatic, but it got a negative review in The Washington Post (2) and a mixed review in The New York Times (3), because it lacks psychological depth.

The reviews don’t say what kind of psychology is missing from this play’s traumatized characters. It is multiple personality.

I did not find any symptoms of multiple personality in this play, because, contrary to what some people might think, I don’t find it when it isn’t there.

1. Tracy Letts. August: Osage County. New York, Dramatists Play Service, 2009.

2. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/12/AR2007121202670.html

3. https://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/13/theater/reviews/13augu.html

“Winnie-the-Pooh” by A. A. Milne (post 3): Poems, not by brain, “find you”; alternate personalities named “Hoo”; Milne “never sentimental” about children 

“Did you make that song up?”

“Well, I sort of made it up,” said Pooh. “It isn’t Brain…but it comes to me sometimes” (1, p. 247).

“Because Poetry and Hums aren’t things which you get [by using your brain], they’re things which get you. And all you can do is to go where they can find you” (1, p. 312).

From author’s introduction to “When We Were Very Young,” a collection of children’s poems, some written by “Hoo,” the name of a group of alternate personalities, ranging in age from four to twenty-eight:

“You may wonder sometimes who is supposed to be saying the verses. Is it the Author, that strange but uninteresting person, or is it Christopher Robin, or some other boy or girl, or Nurse, or Hoo?…I don’t know if you have ever met Hoo, but he is one of those curious children who look four on Monday, and eight on Tuesday, and are really twenty-eight on Saturday…” (1, p. 350).

Note: In multiple personality, it sometimes happens that a group of alternate personalities will be referred to by one collective name rather than be named individually. A previously cited example is Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, in which the name “Dorian Gray” refers to a group of alternate personalities. Search “Dorian Gray.”

“Never Sentimental”

Another indication that alternate personalities may have been involved in the writing of Milne’s children’s books is the remarkable discrepancy between the sentimental feelings that readers sense in these books and the unsentimental attitude that Milne (host personality) expresses in his autobiography:

Milne says he is “not inordinately fond of or interested in children…I have never felt in the least sentimental about them” (2, p. 282). He says “It is easier in England to make a reputation than to lose one. I wrote four ‘Children’s books,’ containing altogether, I suppose, 70,000 words—the number of words in the average-length novel” and then “I gave up writing children’s books. I wanted to escape from them…” but the public wouldn’t let him (2, p. 286).

1. A. A. Milne. The Complete Tales & Poems of Winnie-the-Pooh [1924-1928]. Decorations by Ernest H. Shepard. New York, Dutton Children’s Books, 2001.

2. A. A. Milne. Autobiography. New York, E. P. Dutton, 1939.

“Winnie-the-Pooh” by A. A. Milne (post 2): At the beginning of the story, the title character has three distinct names, and is prolific, if brainless, poet

His three names are Edward Bear, Winnie-the-Pooh, and Sanders. Most people dismiss “Sanders,” the name over the door of his home, as a joke that refers to either a previous resident or a printer known to the author. And there are whole stories about where “Winnie” and “Pooh” came from. But, in my view, the interesting question is this:

Why does the author have—why is the author comfortable with having—three distinct names attached to one person (as if the person had multiple personality)?

Another prominent feature of the main character is that, like the author, he a writer. Edward/Pooh/Sanders is a poet, of which the reader is continually reminded by poem after poem.

But, paradoxically, Edward/Pooh/Sanders is said to have no brain. Milne thus seems to imply that writers (like himself) have no brain (in some sense, later to be discussed).

“The Red House Mystery” by A. A. Milne (author of “Winnie-the-Pooh”): Novel may reflect author’s multiple memory, typical of multiple personality

At the beginning of this novel, Antony—an amateur detective, who eventually solves the murder mystery—mentions that he has an eidetic or photographic memory.

But since it turns out that this talent is not essential to solving the mystery, and is not mentioned in most of the rest of the novel, why is it in this novel at all?

And it is a very peculiar kind of photographic memory, for it seems to involve two memory banks, with one of them recording memories outside the awareness of the other, which you would expect to find only in persons with multiple personality.

“Antony…had a wonderfully retentive mind. Everything he saw or heard seemed to make its corresponding impression somewhere in his brain; often without his being conscious of it; and these photographic impressions were always ready for him when he wished to develop them” (1, p. 23).

“Well, I can’t explain it, whether it’s something in the actual eye, or something in the brain, or what, but I have got a rather uncanny habit of recording things unconsciously…I mean my eyes seem to do it without the brain consciously taking part.” (1, p. 58).

He gives an example of remembering how many steps there are at the entrance to a building that he had previously visited. His regular memory would not know how many steps there had been, but if he now wanted to know, then his other memory bank would provide him with a photographic image of the steps, allowing him to count them (1, p. 58).

These multiple memory banks are suggestive of multiple personality, in which the host personality is helped by an alternate personality, who has remembered things that the regular personality had not.

And since neither the plot nor character development of this novel requires the protagonist to have this, it probably reflects the author’s own mentality.

Search “gratuitous multiple personality” for previous discussions.

1. A. A. Milne. The Red House Mystery [1922]. Smoking Gun Mystery Books, 2017.

“The Psychopathology of Everyday Life” by Sigmund Freud: Freud’s alternate personality breaks ink pot without damaging more precious objects

“It is very rare for me to break anything…Shortage of space in my study has often forced me to handle a number of pottery and stone antiquities…in the most uncomfortable positions, so that onlookers have expressed anxiety that I should knock something down and break it. That however has never happened. Why then did I once dash the marble cover of my plain ink pot to the ground so that it broke?…my sweeping movement was only apparently clumsy; in reality it was extremely adroit and well-directed, and understood how to avoid damaging any of the more precious objects that stood around” (1, pp. 167-168).

Freud focuses his analysis on his motivation for breaking his ink pot (he concludes that he hoped to get a new one as a gift), but he fails to address who broke it, which is a question, since he, himself, had no memory of deciding to break it, and had no memory of guiding his hand so adroitly that he broke nothing else.

A decision to break the ink pot must have been made, and his hand must have been guided, by an intelligence of some sort, but Freud’s regular intelligence had no memory for making that decision or guiding his hand.

Freud would call his alternate intelligence his “unconscious,” but it was unconscious only from the point of view of his regular consciousness.

Freud’s problem was that his model of the mind did not allow for multiple consciousness and alternate personalities. He acknowledged that such cases had been observed and did exist—and it has been pointed out that some of Freud’s own patients probably had it—but Freud, himself, never made the diagnosis. The closest he came to recognizing the dissociation of a personality was probably his colleague’s patient, Anna O.

Freud had a blind spot for multiple personality, possibly because he, himself, had the trait, and his self-analysis was incomplete.

(Search “Freud” for previous posts.)

1. Sigmund Freud. The Psychopathology of Everyday Life [1901]. Translated from the German by Alan Tyson. Edited by James Strachey. New York, WW Norton, 1965.