Science essay in today’s New York Times adds evidence that diagnoses of Schizophrenia and Bipolar are more controversial than Multiple Personality

It is silly when articles about multiple personality begin by saying it is psychiatry’s most controversial diagnosis. Multiple personality has been known for thousands of years, and is controversial only with people who have never made the diagnosis.

Diagnoses of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are less specific. For example, an unknown number of people who are given these diagnoses may actually have disorders of the immune system:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/29/opinion/sunday/schizophrenia-psychiatric-disorders-immune-system.html

This is not to say that schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are invalid diagnoses or should not be treated. I have made these diagnoses many times and employed standard treatments.

But I have also diagnosed multiple personality, and I know it is a more specific condition.

Normal version of multiple personality in Hebrew Bible and New Testament: “Double-minded men” are unstable and sinful, but not possessed by demons

Psalm 119:113,115

“I hate double-minded men…Depart from me, you evildoers, that I may keep the commandments of my God.”

James 1:5-8, 4:8

“If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives to all men generously and without reproaching, and it will be given to him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways, will receive anything from the Lord.”

“Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you men of double mind.”

Comment

In the above quotes, “double-minded” could be taken to mean nothing more than hypocritical and skeptical, but it would be a rather peculiar word to express nothing more than those ideas.

Rather, “double-minded” would seem to suggest two minds or two souls, which in psychological terms would be multiple personality.

The Double in literary criticism and The Trinity in Christian theology: Multiple personality is suspected in the former, but never in the latter 

“According to the church father Augustine anyone who denies the Trinity is in danger of losing her salvation, but anyone who tries to understand the Trinity is in danger of losing her mind” (1, p. 1).

And since “There is no mention of the word ‘Trinity’ in the New Testament” (1, p. 6), how did The Trinity become central to Christian theology?

Is it an interpretation of what the New Testament does mention: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit? But if the New Testament had intended God to be thought of as The Trinity, would it not have said so, explicitly?

As I read The Gospel According to Mark, Jesus proves his divinity by performing miracles, especially by healing through exorcism, the essence of which is to cast out “unclean spirits” or “demons.” And Jesus is able to do that after he is baptized and possessed by the Holy Spirit.

Thus, the gospel does not introduce the Holy Spirit for the purpose of providing a concept of God, but as a way to explain why Jesus is able to exorcise unclean spirits.

Literary criticism of “the double” sometimes mentions multiple personality. But theological literature on The Trinity does not mention it (1, 2).

1. Roger E. Olson, Christopher A. Hall. The Trinity. Grand Rapids (Michigan), William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2002.

2. Gilles Emery O.P., Matthew Levering (Editors). The Oxford Handbook of The Trinity. Oxford University Press, 2011.

Dr. Benjamin Rush, Founding Father, Continental Army Surgeon-General, and Father of American Psychiatry, reported cases of multiple personality

From a review of two biographies in today’s Wall Street Journal:

“During the spring of 1813, former presidents John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were united in grief at the death of a mutual friend who had recently persuaded them to forget their bitter rivalries. Like the two celebrated statesmen, the eminent physician and social reformer Benjamin Rush had been a Founding Father, one of 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

“But Adams and Jefferson believed that Rush deserved to be remembered for much more than his conspicuous enthusiasm for the cause of American liberty. Jefferson wrote that “a better man, than Rush, could not have left us,” extolling his benevolence, learning, genius and honesty. Adams replied with equal praise: He knew of no one, “living or dead,” who had “done more real good in America…

“Rush was the first American physician to argue the baleful influence of strong alcohol and tobacco, an unorthodox view that riled consumers and producers alike. Even more controversial was his attack upon slavery, an institution entrenched in many of Britain’s American colonies…

“Rush was the first American physician to treat mental illness humanely as a disease rather than as criminal behavior or the devil’s work. His “Medical Inquiries and Observations Upon the Diseases of the Mind” was a groundbreaking study, anticipating psychotherapy and occupational therapy. It belatedly earned him the title “Father of American Psychiatry…” (1).

Not mentioned in the above review of two biographies, Dr. Rush “…collected case histories of dissociation and multiple personality…” and “…theorized that the mechanism responsible for the doubling of consciousness lay in a disconnection between the two hemispheres of the brain…” (2, p. 28) (a theory that has since been discredited, but was cutting-edge in his day).

That Dr. Benjamin Rush, more than two hundred years ago, among his social, surgical, medical, and psychological interests, collected cases of multiple personality, is more evidence that multiple personality is one of the oldest, recognized, psychological phenomena.

1. Stephen Brumwell, “Dr. Benjamin Rush, American Hippocrates,” Wall Street Journal, September 20, 2018. https://www.wsj.com/articles/rush-and-dr-benjamin-rush-review-american-hippocrates-1537493843

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

Spirit Possession (Multiple Personality) in The Gospel According to Mark: Jesus is possessed by the Holy Spirit, enabling him to exorcise unclean spirits

Previously, my citation of The New Testament had focussed on Mark 5:1-20, in which Jesus exorcises the Gerasene demoniac, who had been named Legion, because he’d been possessed by a legion of demons. I cited it as an example of multiple personality disorder from two thousand years ago.

But since this blog is primarily about a normal version of multiple personality, I went back to Mark to see if it also described a normal version of spirit possession. It does.

At the beginning of Mark, Jesus is possessed by the “Holy Spirit” (1:8, 10, 12), which first makes him go into the wilderness, where he is tempted by Satan, and then empowers him to heal people who have been possessed by “unclean spirits” or “demons.”

When, later, Jesus is accused of being possessed by Beelzebul, he asks, “How can Satan cast out Satan?” (3:23), meaning that since he exorcises Satan’s demons, he must be possessed, not by Satan, but by the Holy Spirit.

In short, The Gospel According to Mark posits two kinds of spirit possession: good, clean, spirit possession by God’s Holy Spirit, and evil, unclean, spirit possession by Satan’s demons.

Thus, the distinction between good possession or multiple personality and problematic possession or multiple personality goes back thousands of years.

“Lost in Yonkers” by Neil Simon (post 3): Author, whose quotes in past posts suggested he had multiple personality, identifies most with Aunt Bella

After winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1991, Lost in Yonkers was published with a cover picture of two adolescent boys on an empty street (1). But it turns out that neither of those boys is the main character. It is their Aunt Bella.

“As the story began to reveal itself,” Neil Simon said, “I found myself identifying most with Aunt Bella. She is the one I loved, the heroine of what became Lost in Yonkers” (2, p. 568).

In fact, all the play’s other characters are two-dimensional. Once you learn their main trait, you know what to expect. Only Aunt Bella is puzzling and complex.

Is she retarded? No. Crazy? No. Forgetful and disoriented? Sometimes, but at other times she knows things that others don’t. Is she, as is often said, childish? In her plans to get married and open a restaurant, she is thought to be childish and unrealistic, but as the play ends, it is implied that she might know what she is doing.

Two things suggest that she has multiple personality: 1. her puzzling inconsistency (search “puzzling inconsistency” in this blog for past posts on this clue to diagnosis) and 2. the fact that Neil Simon identified with her.

1. Neil Simon. Lost in Yonkers. New York, Random House, 1991.

2. Neil Simon. Neil Simon’s Memoirs: Rewrites [1996] and The Play Goes On [1999]. New York, Simon & Schuster, 2016.

Jo and Humbert Humbert end novel with different personality than they began, because Louisa May Alcott and Vladimir Nabokov had multiple personality

The New York Times has just published appreciations of two classic novels, Little Women (1) and Lolita (2).

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/13/books/little-women-alcott-anniversary.html

2. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/12/books/review/atlas-shrugged-dr-zhivago-lolita.html

But the Times essays fail to explain one of the most amazing things about both these novels: Jo in Little Women and Humbert Humbert in Lolita end their novels with different personalities than they began. I discussed this in two past posts:

September 9, 2017

“Little Women” by Louisa May Alcott (post 11): Jo’s personality radically changes at end of novel, probably because author’s personality switched.

Jo, at the end of the novel, is not the same as Jo at the beginning: she does not have the same personality.

At the beginning, she identifies herself as the boy or man of the house, who would never get married; moreover, she is a dedicated writer, whose writing process is epitomized by her “vortex” (see previous posts). At the end, she is no longer male-identified, is married, has children, and is not a writer.

This radical transformation of Jo’s personality has been called “The Horror of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women,” and interpreted as the author’s pandering to her readers’ wish for a traditional ending (1). I agree that the character’s personality undergoes a radical transformation, but have a different reason for it.

Alcott could have gotten Jo married, but left her personality unchanged in private, or at least in the privacy of her own mind. And Jo’s marriage could have left her free to pursue her writing, just as Amy’s marriage left her free to pursue her art. So I don’t believe that Alcott had to change Jo’s personality for commercial reasons.

What, then, does explain the radical change in Jo’s personality? My theory is that the author had multiple personality, and one personality wrote the beginning of the novel, but a different personality wrote the end of the novel.

Such a thing may be more common than you think. In past posts, I have cited similarly remarkable inconsistencies and contradictions between the beginnings and endings of other novels—e.g., Nabokov’s Lolita and Oates’ You Must Remember This—and, in the context of other things known about the authors, had to come to the same conclusion.

1. Angela M. Estes and Kathleen Margaret Lant. “Dismembering the Text: The Horror of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women,” pages 564-583, in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women or Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy [1868-69]. New York, W. W. Norton, 2004.

August 6, 2015

Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita (post 3): This novel’s blatant self-contradictions reflect multiple narrative personalities that should have been reconciled in rewrite

Now that I’ve read Lolita, I’m no longer interested in whether Clare Quilty is a “double” of Humbert Humbert (HH). No, the main feature of this novel—especially in regard to multiple personality—is self-contradiction.

At the beginning of Lolita, HH spells out his fixation on “nymphets,” who are pubescent girls aged nine to fourteen. But at the end, HH wants to live forever-after with Lolita even though she is no longer a nymphet: She is years too old, not to mention married and pregnant by someone else…

…It is like the person who wrote the end of this novel was not the same person who wrote the beginning, and hadn’t even read the beginning.

Search “Alcott” and “Nabokov” in this blog to see all posts about these writers.

On Writing by Neil Simon (post 2): His regular self, baffled by his writing self, does not feel like he wrote Lost in Yonkers, his Pulitzer Prize play 

“I slowly began to understand Neil the person, but Neil the writer baffled me. He was infinitely smarter than I was, cleverer, more imaginative…I could talk with ease to Neil the person. We discussed baseball, movies, books, children, and we occasionally played tennis with other real people. Neil the writer had time for only one thing: he wrote. That was all he wanted to do. I had no idea how he structured plays, created characters, plotted stories, gave flesh to boneless figures, and very often did this quite humorously. However he did that, I know I couldn’t. As a matter of fact, I don’t think the writer really liked me. He felt I wasted time…Some nights after dinner, Neil, the husband and father, would walk upstairs to his desk, putter around, look at some pages the other fellow had written during the day, then suddenly change from one to the other, sit down, and continue to add more pages” (1, p. 177).

“I’ve always wondered what composers see in their heads, but I see scenes, characters, people in conflict, whether in serious or humorous dilemmas. I never turn the picture on in my head. It just starts playing when I’m not doing something else” (1, p. 293).

“By picking up a pen and gazing at the blank pages of the spiral notebook in front of me, I suddenly lost sight of my surroundings and circumstances, and entered the world in which the characters I created were living out their own problems or good fortune. They had no interest in my immediate woes, no knowledge they even existed. Which led me to think: Did they know I was there, in their place, their room, sitting in a dark corner witnessing the most personal moments of their own inner conflicts? Did these characters even care that I was committing their words, their thoughts, their actions to paper? Were they oblivious to the fact that I might one day share their lives with total strangers, who were privy to this information only by my invitation? Since they never brought it up, I didn’t bother mentioning it to them” (1, p. 352).

“I truly didn’t know where the plays came from, where the ability to put these thoughts on the page, shaping them and forming them with clarity and intelligence started. Because of this insecurity, I felt I was not yet ready to sit down and handle a good conversation with Arthur Miller or Tom Stoppard without embarrassing myself…

“I still had not solved the mystery of where the plays come from; sometimes I had doubts that I wrote them at all. I know I didn’t write Lost in Yonkers. It didn’t come from me. I saw the play a number of times and there’s no chance that I’m the author. Yet I remember each day as I sat at my desk, the words and pages flowing from my pen, the emotions of the characters taking over all my senses, so I must assume that I was the one who wrote Lost in Yonkers. Recently, at a tribute in my honor, I watched as scenes from various plays I had written were performed. When they got to Lost in Yonkers, I listened in awe at the power of the words, and silently I said to myself, ‘God, I wish I could write like that.’ No one said you had to be sane to be a playwright” (1, pp. 440-444).

1. Neil Simon. Neil Simon’s Memoirs: Rewrites [1996] and The Play Goes On [1999]. New York, Simon & Schuster, 2016.

“Splitting the Difference” by Wendy Doniger: Hindu and Greek myths teem with doubled and split characters, literary metaphors for multiple personality

In Splitting the Difference, Wendy Doniger, Professor of the History of Religions, has a few pages on multiple personality, but it is a brief, minor detour. Her thesis is gender:

“Hindu and Greek mythologies teem with stories of women and men who are given doubles, who double themselves, who are seduced by gods doubling as mortals, whose bodies are split or divided…Myth, Doniger argues, responds to the complexities of the human condition by multiplying or splitting its characters into unequal parts, and these sloughed and cloven selves animate mythology’s prodigious plots of sexuality and mortality. Doniger’s comparisons show that ultimately differences in gender are more significant than differences in culture; Greek and Indian stories of doubled women resemble each other more than they do tales of doubled men in the same culture. In casting Hindu and Greek mythologies as shadows of each other, Doniger shows that culture is sometimes but the shadow of gender.” —from back cover of Splitting the Difference: Gender and Myth in Ancient Greece and India (The University of Chicago Press, 1999)

This book does raise issues of gender in the mythology of Ancient India and Greece, but it also shows the pervasiveness of literary metaphors for multiple personality.

“The Lotus and the Storm” by Lan Cao (post 6): Mai’s alternate personality, Bao, narrates the last chapter of this apparently autobiographical novel

I would guess that the multiple personality in this novel is autobiographical, since, 1. if it were not, it would be silly to make it so prominent, or include it at all, 2. the novel’s depiction of multiple personality is realistic enough to have been based on personal experience, 3. the Acknowledgments names a clinical psychologist who specializes in treating multiple personality, based in Virginia (USA) and 4. on the novel’s last page, Bao says, “Mai wants what I want—for us to be reconciled and integrated…When we return to Virginia, she will get the help we need to heal” (1, p. 386).

Although the depiction of multiple personality is generally realistic, I question the assumption that Mai has only three personalities: Mai (host personality), Bao (scowling, alternate personality), and Cecile (child personality).

As noted previously, Bao has declared herself the omniscient one, who knows everything that Mai and Cecile think and do; whereas, Mai has memory gaps for times that Bao has taken control. So an explanation is required for Bao’s memory gap: “There is suddenly a memory I cannot quite place” (1, p. 346). There must be one or more additional personalities to account for where that memory came from.

Also, Bao hears unidentified voices: “I am taken over instead by an echo of pleading voices” (1, p. 266), which may be voices of additional personalities.

So Mai probably has more than three personalities, as most people with multiple personality do. It is typical to initially think they have only two or three personalities, but then you notice things for which those few personalities can’t account.

In conclusion, The Lotus and the Storm is an engaging novel of the Vietnam war, Vietnamese culture, the Vietnamese-American community, and multiple personality. In regard to the latter, it is notable that one of the novel’s three narrators is explicitly acknowledged to be an alternate personality.

1. Lan Cao. The Lotus and the Storm. New York, Viking, 2014.

“The Lotus and the Storm” by Lan Cao (post 5): In USA 2006, Mai’s alternate personality, Bão (the storm), gives her condescending point of view

“It is I, Bão…Of course I can hear her [Mai] and see her…I am the omniscient one among us three. Cecile is merely the charming little girl…But I am Bão, the storm, not Báo the treasure. I am the malevolent central player. Mai is here, half bewildered, half alert, adjacent to the distinct lives we have been spinning in this country [USA] where we have dwelled for thirty tarnished years…

“There is a medical word in this country to describe Mai and Cecile and me. Our madness was once called multiple personality disorder but now it is coined dissociative identity disorder…

“Once, in Cholon [suburb of Saigon where Mai lived until 1975]…our father…could sense my presence…‘What is your name?’ he whispered. ‘Bao,’ I said…I was merely repeating the word he himself had used to describe Mai. I didn’t have a name before then, but once I uttered it, I knew it was mine…‘Does Mai know about you?’ he wondered. I nodded. ‘But she doesn’t like me,’ I admitted…

“I often caught him [father] in a state of observation and contemplation, perhaps trying to figure out how two (sometimes three, if you counted little Cecile) beings shuffled through one physical body…

“Although she [Mai] is the one with the public face, in truth she is small and subsidiary, a weakness that can be obliterated…I can smell the primitive scent of her fear. It is the fear of not quite knowing what happened or why…

“I can tell he [father] understands we have a division of labor. I bring him food, feed him, and cater to his needs. Mai works [she is a lawyer] and pays the bills” (1, pp. 235-241).

1. Lan Cao. The Lotus and the Storm. New York, Viking, 2014.

“The Lotus and the Storm” by Lan Cao (post 4): Vietnam 1975, Mai, 17, says “I am slowly learning how to carry on calmly, projecting a singular, unified self”

“The sight of her, a big scowling shadow like a darkened, angry girl crouched in a corner…There she sits, this nameless she…These meetings once wiped me out but seemed to give her renewed power. They used to be occasions in which she vanquished me and took over. I would be obliterated and sent into lost time. Her appearance was violent…Now it is more straightforward…an icier, stealthy disturbance…Somehow we have managed to accommodate each other. I still dread her appearance, but it no longer carries with it the threat of total destruction…

“I am slowly learning how to carry on calmly, projecting a singular, unified self…I have come to expect them both. There are two…Both are a cross-stitch of personalities…waiting to be released from sorrow and pain…

“I hear a shuffling sound. A little girl, smaller than I, emerges from a mysterious place…Her face is sweet and soft, framed by fine black hair that curls like mine used to when I was little. The girl reaches over and gives our mother a squeeze on her arm. Mother neither responds nor pulls away. She looks indifferently at the little girl. Cecile, I think…Playmate to the mynah bird. Still miraculously a little child somehow immune to the passage of chronological time. When Cecile emerges, I am edged out, lost inside time, but not completely. I am both in and out of consciousness…” (1, pp. 214-215).

1. Lan Cao. The Lotus and the Storm. New York, Viking, 2014.

“The Lotus and the Storm” by Lan Cao (post 3): Mai has blackouts, self-injury, and sees her “split self” in mirror, so family calls in thay phap exorcist

It is now 1971 in Vietnam and Mai, thirteen, has found bruises on her body. She does not recall how the bruises got there, but her grandmother, who has seen her injure herself, says, “Don’t hit yourself anymore. I will hold your hands and tie them to mine if I have to” (1, p. 178). I previously discussed self-injury in multiple personality in regard to Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects.

Like other persons with multiple personality, Mai may see one of her alternate personalities when she looks in a mirror. So she avoids looking in mirrors. She says, “I do not permit myself to look. I am too aware of what I might see, an eerie manifestation of a new, split self that adopts my form and face and stands in a spark of angry, grievous judgment of all that has occurred” (1, p. 179).

At least in retrospect, Mai is psychologically-minded, and speaks in terms of a “split self,” but her teacher and family think she is the victim of spirit possession: “Overtaken by more blackouts, I am sent home from school again. Whatever my teacher saw caused her to describe the incident to Mother as something ‘like being possessed’ ” (1, p. 185).

So her family calls in a thay phap, who says, “There are hundreds of spirits of all kinds. There are those who guide and those who harass, sometimes deliberately, sometimes not. I will work to exorcise the malevolent ones” (1, p. 189).

1. Lan Cao. The Lotus and the Storm. New York, Viking, 2014.

“The Lotus and the Storm” by Lan Cao (post 2): Vietnamese girl, age 10, living with her family near Saigon, has more symptoms of multiple personality

Previously: In 1967, Mai had been mute following the death of her older sister from a stray bullet. But her alternate personality, Cecile, who was not mute, had been talking to the family’s pet myna bird. Mai, the host personality, had had no awareness of Cecile and no memory for the periods of time that Cecile had taken over; that is, she had memory gaps. Eventually, Mai started to speak again.

Now: In 1968, at age ten, Mai notes the following: “I feel the fleeting burden of two selves separating…A child’s tiny voice whispers in my ear…the truth is I do not remember. I black out…I surface once again into my own consciousness…Shut up, a voice commands me. The voices are back, emanating soundlessly from somewhere within my body…Like a storm, black and raging, a figure from within me shifts her shape until she is enormous and angry and erupts with a roar that swipes everything else aside. A keep quiet is sounded. It is there, speaking in the voice of an angry girl. Who is it? Is someone else here? Cecile. Cecile? Cecile cowers and cries. I sense a little girl’s movement…A voice rumbles within my chest, the stormy appearance of a new scowling being…Everything turns black again…When I come back to myself after lost time, everything is quiet…A part of me is still watching another part. All of us stand there together…” (1, pp. 158-165).

1. Lan Cao. The Lotus and the Storm. New York, Viking, 2014, 386 pages.

President Trump: White House insider and Bob Woodward report puzzling inconsistency and puzzling lying, possible signs of multiple personality

“There is literally no telling whether he might change his mind from one minute to the next” (1).

“If this book has a single point to drive home, it is that the president of the United States is a congenital liar” (2).

Puzzling inconsistency and puzzling lying may be clues that a person has multiple personality, because they may represent unacknowledged switching among various personalities.

For previous discussion of these issues in regard to Trump and 200 novelists, use the search box in this blog to search “Trump,” “puzzling inconsistency,” “memory gaps,” and “lying.”

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/05/opinion/trump-white-house-anonymous-resistance.html

2. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/05/books/review-fear-trump-in-white-house-bob-woodward.html

Jennifer Finney Boylan (post 12): “We don’t deserve…the clueless telling us they know who we are,” but her own memoir and novel are not clueless

Professor of English and New York Times contributing opinion writer Jennifer Finney Boylan, who has previously written of her male-to-female surgery, describes “The Moment I Became My Real Self” (title of the print version of her essay):

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/04/opinion/transgender-coming-out.html

In it she says, “Individuals who arrive at such profound and difficult moments don’t deserve to be interrogated…we don’t deserve clever think pieces…We don’t deserve…the clueless telling us they know who we are better than we do.” They deserve a hug.

But she is of interest here, not because she is transgender, but because she is a professor of English and a novelist. And here are my past posts, which begin with her curious failure to mention multiple personality in regard to “Harvey,” and then go on to discuss possible clues to multiple personality in her own memoir and novel.

December 13, 2017

Literature professor says “Harvey,” based on Mary Chase’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, is a great holiday movie, but she fails to recognize multiple personality.

Jennifer Finney Boylan in New York Times on “Harvey" https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/12/opinion/christmas-holidays-movies.html?_r=0

Search “Mary Chase” for my brief past post on this play.

Search “McConnachie” for posts related to J. M. Barrie’s real-life version of Harvey (in the sense of having a co-conscious, companionable, alternate personality), except that McConnachie is not an animal. For another literary example of an animal alternate personality, search “Kafka.”

People with multiple personality sometimes see and interact with their alternate personalities—like children do with their imaginary companions and fiction writers sometimes do with their characters—either when they look in the mirror (search “mirror” and “mirrors”) or as a free-standing visual hallucination (not psychotic, because they know very well that it is not objectively true and that other people cannot see it).

I think that professors of literature should know about these things, so that they know what they are reading.

They can still enjoy “Harvey,” just as people can still enjoy Peter Pan even if they know about J. M. Barrie’s “McConnachie.”

Indeed, knowing that “Harvey” is a case of multiple personality, and that multiple personality is not a psychosis, might even reinforce their enjoyment of “Harvey.”

And as I emphasize in this blog, if a person’s multiple personality does not cause significant distress or dysfunction, it is not a mental illness, and may even be an asset.

June 23, 2018

“Growing Up Haunted” by Jennifer Finney Boylan: Asks why person with gender dysphoria, a condition without visual hallucinations, would see “ghosts”

Professor Boylan (1, 2) had already published a memoir about the resolution of gender dysphoria by sex reassignment surgery, so her next memoir, I’m Looking Through You, Growing Up Haunted (3), was meant to raise a separate issue: why she had seen “ghosts” (4).

“I do not believe in ghosts, although I have seen them with my own eyes…Maybe someday researchers will tell us more about what makes people see things that are not there…In the meantime, when it comes to ghosts…we’re all pretty much on our own” (3, p. 107).

Two ghosts she had seen, while he was growing up (prior to sex reassignment surgery), were a young girl standing before him, and an older woman when he looked in the mirror.

If visual hallucinations cannot be accounted for by a neurological condition, medical condition, or psychosis, then the cause may be multiple personality, especially if the person is a novelist, playwright, or poet.

Search visual hallucinations, ghost, ghosts, mirror, and mirrors.

[Note added Oct. 11, 2020: The "ghost" of a recently deceased loved one is a relatively common, normal experience, and is not the kind of ghost that she is talking about.]

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Finney_Boylan

2. https://barnard.edu/profiles/jennifer-boylan

3. Jennifer Finney Boylan. I’m Looking Through You: Growing Up Haunted (A Memoir). New York, Broadway Books, 2008.

4. https://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/31/opinion/31boylan.html

June 24, 2018

“Growing Up Haunted” by Jennifer Finney Boylan (post 3): Had the alternate personality in the mirror gotten the body remade in her own image?

I see two defendable interpretations, a skeptical one and multiple personality.

Skeptical

Since standard medical practice would include an evaluation for multiple personality before going ahead with sex reassignment surgery, the author has already been evaluated for multiple personality and found not to have it. (Of course, the validity of that finding would depend on what questions they asked her and how truthfully she answered them.)

Multiple Personality

The following passage, from near the end of the memoir, could be interpreted to mean that the alternate personality, previously seen in the mirror, and now seen once again, had succeeded in getting the body remade in her own image:

“I looked up, and there she was, just as in days long past. Floating in the mirror was the translucent old woman in the white clothes. I hadn’t seen her reflected there for years and years, but there she was once more, looking at me with that surprised expression I remembered from my childhood. Why, Jenny Boylan. What are you doing here?

“Except that, as I stared at her, I realized that it was no ghost. After all this time, I was only looking at my own reflection.

“Against all odds, I had become solid.

“Was it possible, I thought, as I looked at the woman in the mirror, that it was some future version of myself I’d seen here when I was a child? From the very beginning, had I only been haunting myself?” (1, p. 249).

Conclusion

Although I’m inclined to interpret “ghosts” and strange reflections in the mirror as alternate personalities, I can’t make a definitive diagnosis here.

1. Jennifer Finney Boylan. I’m Looking Through You: Growing Up Haunted (A Memoir). New York, Broadway Books, 2008.

June 25, 2018

“Growing Up Haunted” by Jennifer Finney Boylan (post 4): Some people have transsexualism, others have multiple personality, but some may have both

Three Possibilities

People seeking sex reassignment surgery are screened for multiple personality, because there have been cases in which multiple personality was the actual problem.

It is generally thought that a person has either one condition or the other. And I have no reason to doubt that some people have transsexualism with no multiple personality, and that other people have multiple personality with no transsexualism.

But if you are born with transsexualism, and have it during childhood, the social difficulties could be traumatic, and since some children cope with trauma by developing multiple personality, there would probably be some fraction of the transsexual population who have developed multiple personality, secondarily.

I’m Looking Through You

The memoir’s full title is I’m Looking Through You: Growing Up Haunted. Perhaps the title alludes to the Lennon/McCartney lyric, which begins:

I'm looking through you, where did you go?

I thought I knew you, what did I know?

You don't look different, but you have changed

I'm looking through you, you're not the same

But since Boylan does look different, I don’t see how that song would apply. Except that the woman Boylan sees in the mirror is translucent, and the title could be the host personality’s view through the translucent alternate personality.

Another possibility is that “I’m looking through you” is the perspective of an alternate personality, who is inside, looking out through the eyes of the host personality.

July 28, 2018

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.

“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
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDsclKHb7Lo

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

“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 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 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 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 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.